The Spark of An Open Flame
by HinataElyonToph
Summary: Constance Grisham only had three main focuses in life: Her job as a school teacher, her duty as a small town superhero, and her daughter, Katia. When she is recruited into the Avengers Initiative, she takes on two new focuses: saving the world, and falling in love with a certain man with anger management issues. BruceOC, Clintasha, and Pepperony. Rated M for adult themes.
1. Chapter 1: The Big Guy

**Howdy everyone :) This is my brand new story!**

**Ok, I know I still have a lot I need to do on my other stories, but as most of you know, life and lack of motivation makes it hard. But this one I am TOTALLY confident about!**

**I got into Avengers this past summer when I went to see it with a bunch of friends. At first (when it came out) I had no real desire to see it. But after hearing my good friend swyatt4 talk about it so much, I started having a dsesire to go see it. So we all went...and it was the best 2 hours of my life so far. I was hooked...especially on dear Dr. Bruce Banner :3 He's just so ADORABLE! And really, Mark Ruffalo is sexy.**

**In the words of Mark Ruffalo and Tom Hiddleston, I have been _Ruffalized_.**

**Anyways, so I have been reading a lot of BruceOC fanfictions, and I have to say you people have AMAZING ideas. You have inspired me to create one of my own, but in a way that you guys have NOT thought of yet! *evil laughter* ehh sorry.**

**NOTE! This first chapter just starts out with Bruce's introduction scene in the movie. My character will be introduced in the _next_ chapter!**

**Disclaimer: I do not own the Avengers. This awesometastic movie belongs to MARVEL. **

**Enjoy guys!**

* * *

The Tesseract has awakened.

It is on a little world. A _Human_ world.

_They_ would wield its power, but our ally knows its workings as _they_ never will.

He is ready to lead. And our force, our _Chitauri_, will follow.

The world will be his, the Universe yours.

And the Humans? What can they do?

But _burn_.

* * *

It was night when the little girl led Dr. Bruce Banner to a house on the outskirts of Calcutta, India. She had come to him while he was tending to patients fallen victim to a sickness. At first, the woman in the household tried to shoo her away as her husband stopped her from entering the house. _"There is sickness here!"_ she had exclaimed in exasperated Hindi. The girl had spotted him right away, and pleaded in her small voice for him to come and help her ailing father.

He had asked her if it was the same sickness that he was treating in that very house. _"Like them?" _he had pointed to the two bed-ridden children lying miserably in the corner, their bodies wracked with coughing and fever.

"Please." She had whimpered, holding up a few rupees clutched tightly in her little fist. Her sad doe eyes made it impossible for him to say no.

Now here he was, stepping into the threshold of the run down little house, following the little girl as she ran inside. Once indoors, he noticed something was off. And it wasn't about the residents of the house. It was the complete lack thereof.

Nobody was the there.

He looked around in puzzlement and had just enough time to catch sight of the little girl as she slipped out of the glasses window of a tiny bedroom at the back of the house. She had been lying, and had just led him here for no cause. He sighed to himself in disbelief and ran a hand through his messy black curls.

"Should've gotten paid up front, Banner." He reprimanded himself, licking his dry lips.

"You know," a voice sounded from behind, startling him and making him whirl around to find the source. Out from behind a curtain stepped a woman wearing a black shirt, a long and dark turquoise skirt that brushed the floor, a magenta sash tied loosely around her waist, and a red wrap draped around her upper torso. Her thin face was framed by wavy, chin length, fiery red locks, and her guarded gray eyes pierced his own, emphasized by her smoky eye-shadow. A presence in the back of his mind growled at the intruder, becoming a little restless at being surprised. It didn't like being startled. Panic swirled in his heart and he quickly forced the grumbling disturbance to calm down. The woman stopped in front of him with her hands on her hips. "For a man who's supposed to be avoiding stress, you picked a hell of a place to settle."

Bruce couldn't help but smile wryly as he set his bag down. "Avoiding stress isn't the secret." He said.

Her smirk matched his almost perfectly, her eyes still careful. "Then what is it? Yoga?"

She was trying to be lighthearted with him, he could see, despite that her guard was up. But she was trying _gently_. She was a smart woman. A smart _spy_, he should say. There was no doubt in his mind that that was what she was. It just fit her somehow. "You've brought me to the edge of the city. Smart." He paused and squinted out of the small window at the back of the house, straining his hearing for the sounds of guns being cocked and whispered orders. That usually happened to him in a situation like this. They thought they could contain the beast that way. He would hate to have to prove them horribly wrong. "I uh…assume the whole place is surrounded?"

The woman shook her head and removed the red wrap from around her, dropping it to the table standing in the middle of the room. "Just you and me." She told him.

He didn't quite believe her. 'The Other Guy' shouldn't be taken that lightly unless you wanted to be killed. There would almost have to be some kind of precaution in case he was to come out. But he had to keep things light in order to figure out what it was this woman wanted from him. He gestured to the busted out window where the little Indian girl had disappeared. "And your actress buddy, is she a spy too? Do they start that young?"

"I did." Was her reply, coupled with an almost blank expression and a shrug of her shoulders.

"Who are you?" he began his guarded interrogation of the redhead.

"Natasha Romanoff." She answered him automatically in a soft voice. She was giving him straight answers. She was a _very_ smart woman.

"Are you here to kill me, Miss Romanoff?" he asked her with a hint of bitterness in his voice. It wouldn't be the first time if she was. "Because that's not gonna work out for everyone."

Natasha shook her head again. "No. No, of course not." She said calmly as if he had asked her some completely trivial and ludicrous question. She took a few steps towards him. "I'm here on behalf of S.H.I.E.L.D."

Bruce could not believe what he was hearing, and he felt a small feeling of anger well up in the pit of his stomach. S.H.I.E.L.D. knew where he was? How was this possible? He thought he had escaped them God knows how long ago, escaped the ruins after his previous…incident with 'The Other Guy'. But now here was Natasha Romanoff, now realized to be a S.H.I.E.L.D. agent (why would she be here on their behalf if she wasn't?), sitting in front of him and talking to him like she did this sort of thing every day.

"_S.H.I.E.L.D_…." he trailed off in a soft growl, words temporarily failing to come out of his mouth for the reason that he was so shocked and annoyed. He quickly recuperated, however, and calmed himself. "How did they find me?"

"We never lost you, doctor." Natasha answered offhandedly, her hands fidgeting and clasping together in front of her. She kept her watchful gaze straight on him, and he could swear that she hadn't blinked once with how intense her stare was. "We've kept our distance, even helped keep some other interested parties off your scent."

Well that was very generous of them, he thought cynically. He should be at least a little grateful, he knew, that they had done that for him. But for what? He was still taken aback that he been on their radar the entire time. Why did they continuously keep tabs on him? To use him for their own purposes? To keep an eye on the beast that was 'The Other Guy' even though it seemed he had him under semi-stable control?

"Why?" was all he could say.

"Nick Fury seems to trust you." She shrugged, the ghost of a smile playing on her lips. "But now I need you to come in."

Bruce frowned. "What if I said no?"

"I'll persuade you." She countered with an almost uneasy looking smirk. He licked his chapped lips again.

"And what if the…'Other Guy' says no?"

"You've been more than a year without an incident." Natasha affirmed, tilting her head to the side. Damn, they _had _been keeping tabs on him. Was it really over a year? He didn't care to count. He just wanted to forget everything that happened in that incident. Wanted to forget about Harlem and General Ross.

Wanted to forget about Betty…

"I don't think you wanna break that streak." She said.

Bruce smiled sardonically for a brief moment. It immediately dropped as he nudged an old, paint-spattered infant's cradle, a pang of painful sadness crawling into his heart. The sadness of not being able to have what he was currently playing with was used for. "I don't always get what I want." He mumbled, his throat tight.

Natasha sighed to herself, twiddling her thumbs and wiggling her entwined fingers, oblivious to the gloomy cloud that had befallen the good doctor in front of her. This was getting nowhere. She needed Banner on board as soon as possible, especially without unleashing his…problem. This banter was just making him frustrated, she was sure.

She walked to the bag she had discarded when she first arrived at this dingy little hut, rummaging in one of the pockets until she found her cell phone. She quickly entered her picture folder and selected the most recent shot. "Doctor, we are facing a potential global catastrophe."

Bruce's scornful reappeared as he turned his attention away from the cradle, forcing the pain from his heart. He chuckled bitterly. "Oh, those I actively try to avoid." He responded.

Natasha set her phone onto the worn-looking table and slid it across the wooden surface towards him. "This is the Tesserect." She explained, watching as he pulled out a pair of glasses from his blazer pocket and slid them onto his face. "It has the potential energy to wipe out the entire planet."

Bruce stared at the picture. It was of a blue and white cube that glowed brightly and looked to be pulsing with energy. It was safe for him to say that it was not of this world. And it was very powerful. "What does Fury want me to do?" He asked cuttingly. "Swallow it?"

Natasha was starting to get antsy. He wasn't trying to hide his growing annoyance and contempt for S.H.I.E.L.D., and that was making the situation increasingly dangerous. She needed to be extra careful from now on if her mission was going to succeed. The last thing she needed was for him to get angry and subsequently lose control. "He wants you to find it." She elucidated calmly. She lowered herself into one of the rickety, old chairs that stood near the table. Her eyes once more remained cautiously on him. "It's been taken. It emits a gamma signature that's too weak for us to trace. There's no one that knows gamma radiation like you do. If there was, that's where I'd be."

Bruce still looked contemptuously suspicious as he gave her the cell phone back. A small portion of his mind felt a tiny bit flattered, but an even bigger portion didn't quite believe her words. It was too much of a coincidence that he was the best gamma ray expert they could find who _just happened_ to have a giant, pissed-off green guy for an alter ego. "So Fury isn't after the monster?" he questioned as he pulled his glasses off and slid them back into his pocket.

"Not that he's told me." She answered honestly.

"And he tells you everything?"

"Talk to Fury," she told him, leaning forward in her chair. "He needs you on this."

Bruce's distrust in the woman was not going to go down without a fight. He decided that, since she was an actress herself, he would show her just how good his own acting was. He wanted to see her reaction if she thought he would allow 'The Other Guy' to run free.

"He needs me in a cage?" he bit back acerbically.

"No one's gonna put you in a-"

"_**STOP LYING TO ME!**_" Bruce lashed out in that instant, getting in Natasha's face and slamming his hands down on the table in anger.

She moved swiftly, quicker than he had ever seen anybody move in a long while. Before he so much as blinked, the redhead was on her feet and had an armed M1911 pistol aimed at his chest, her face stony and unreadable but her eyes and the twitching muscles in her throat betraying her fear.

He slowly straightened himself, so he didn't provoke her to shoot, and an apologetically sheepish smile graced his lips. "I'm sorry…that was mean." He said softly, ducking his head.

Natasha didn't move, and she didn't put down her gun. Her finger was still locked on the trigger. "I just wanted to see what you'd do." He admitted, his smile becoming gentle. He wasn't an ass like that all of the time, honest. Just when 'The Other Guy' was concerned.

She still didn't budge. Bruce could worry that she might have been frightened to death and was just frozen like that, but he saw her throat continue to twitch. Now look what you did, Banner, he scolded himself again. In hindsight, maybe showing off his apparently remarkable acting skills wasn't a very good idea.

"Why don't we do this the easy way," he spoke to her kindly, slowly, hoping to get her to loosen up. He began feeling anxious and uneasy as the presence in the back of his mind roared angrily at the sight of the gun. It wanted out, and Bruce was starting to get worried for Natasha Romanoff's safety. "Where you don't use that, and 'The Other Guy' doesn't make a mess? Okay?"

He wondered if she had seen Medusa and turned to stone by this time, as she still didn't move. "Natasha…?" he whispered. His heart rate began to pick up, causing panic to well up in his gut again.

Then, finally, she moved. Her right hand let go of the gun and flew to her ear, where it rested on an earpiece that he hadn't noticed before. Mainly it was because it was hidden under her fiery locks. "Stand down. We're good here." She said into it.

And that was when he heard it: the sound of guns being lowered and gruff, male voices shouting orders to one another. Ah, there it is, he thought with a wry smirk.

"Just you and me?" he chuckled, raising an eyebrow. She shrugged again, which seemed to him as a trademark move for her. She stepped back into the room behind the curtain from where she had first emerged, and returned with a black coat with the S.H.I.E.L.D. emblem emblazoned on the shoulders.

"So," she said finally, shakily, as she slipped the coat on. "Are you going to come with me?"

Bruce sighed, feeling conflicted as he rubbed at the scruffiness of his jaw in thought. He had tried his hardest to avoid being detected by S.H.I.E.L.D., but now that he knew they had always known he was here in Calcutta, what else was there to do? They needed him to find this Tesseract, and soon by the sound of it.

Why not, he asked himself, ignoring the growls of protest from 'The Other Guy', who was blatantly making it known that he did not like Natasha or this idea of walking straight and willingly into S.H.I.E.L.D.'s clutches. Whose to say they would keep him in their grasp if he agreed and he found this energy cube. Then again, he reasoned with the other guy, the sooner he found the Tesseract, the sooner he could be back here and the sooner he could be left alone. He wanted to be trusted, and therefore, he had to trust them even if he didn't want to. And the people here had gotten along okay without him before, and the plaguing illness was faltering slightly, so they should be okay while he was gone.

Finally, he nodded tiredly. "Yes," he sighed again, once more ignoring the snarling objection from Big, Green, and Angry. "I'll help you find the Tesseract."

"Good." She said, nodding briskly. She moved to pick up her discarded bag and turned her attention back to him. "We'll swing by your place so you can pack. Then we need to be gone."

Bruce picked up his own bag, nodding as he ran a hand through his hair again. Natasha had turned and walked out of the entrance to the house, leaving him alone to his thoughts for a few minutes.

"What did you just agree to, Banner?" he mumbled to himself tiredly before walking out the door.

* * *

**And that be a wrap!**

**I don't remember where I read it, but someone said the part where Bruce nudged the cradle and said "I don't always get what I want" indicated that he wanted kids and was scared to have them because of the Other Guy (and with the possiblilty of every woman running away from him once they found out about the Other Guy). I could totally see that as the reason behind it, so I applied it into my story. Oh, don't worry, guys, he'll be happy at the end! :D**

**Reviews would be wonderful and would make my day! Constructive criticism would be kool (but just be nice about it!) and if you can't find something nice to say flamers, then don't say anything at all. Don't like, don't read. Simple as that!**

**I'm starting on chapter 2 now, guys! I have a small portion already typed up, so hopefully I will get it in by the end of this week.**

**See ya next time!**


	2. Chapter 2: Your Assistance Is Needed

**NEW CHAPTER GUYS! Whoo!**

**Okay, so This chapter introduces my Oc, Constance Grisham :) Hope you guys like it!**

**DISCLAIMER: I do not own _the Avengers_! This amazingly awesome movie belongs to MARVEL. I only own Constance and Katia.**

**Enjoy!**

* * *

_"Most atoms in our bodies were once a part of the earth. Volcanoes brought these atoms to the surface."_ the deep, bellowing voice of Stacy Keach resonated throughout the silent classroom, booming from the speakers of the old television situated at the front. On the screen, networks of red hot lava bubbled and splashed and exploded all over the place, glowing beautifully in the darkness of night. The twelve pairs of adolescent eyes stared at the screen almost in complete boredom, nearly drifting off to sleep, but they stayed awake due to the eyes of the teacher watching them closely as if they were bombs that were about to explode.

Constance Grisham observed her students carefully out of the corner of her eye as she typed in a Word document on her computer. Their jaded, uninterested gazes were still on the television, but they knew she was watching them without even having to look. She had told them in no uncertain terms that while she would not give them worksheets to fill out during the movie, she would be taking a grade on their participation, which meant that she would be watching to see if any of them still slept or read or doodled during the film. So far, she had only caught three of them, and had marked their grades accordingly in her online grade book.

_"No matter where we live,"_ Stacy Keach's voice said again, and the scene changed to the lava cascading downwards in a series of waterfalls, more spewing out of the volcano in a fiery explosion. This was one of Constance's favorite parts. The footage was just so beautiful. _"We have all been touched...by fire."_

Finally, the noise of an explosion sounded with a final eruption of lava, and the dramatic music began to quiet as the screen went dark. Constance stood up and walked over to the television set just as the credits began to roll. She pressed the stop and rewind buttons on the VCR while the class breathed a sigh of relief. Finally, the movie was over.

As the tape rewound, Constance drifted to the light switches by the classroom door, flipping both up and illuminating the room in bright, fluorescent light. A few of the teens gave a grunt of pained protest due to their eyes being used to the dark, but she ignored it.

"Before you leave, I want you to turn in your research papers." she spoke to the group as she glanced at the clock hanging above the door. It was 2:38 in the afternoon; two minutes until the final bell rang and the school day would be over. Thank God it was Friday. "I was debating whether or not to give you some extra time to fix things if need be and have you turn it in after Spring Break, but I decided against it."

She went around the room and in between the aisles of desks, collecting the small packets of paper stapled together from the students and setting them on her desk, sitting down after she was done. She resumed her typing once more just as a loud, drawn out beep issued from the PA system.

Constance smiled as the teens rose from their desks and began sauntering towards the door, chatting away animatedly and laughing with their friends. "Have a great Spring Break!" she called to them.

"You too, Miss Grisham!" a few of the politer students called back. The once quiet hallway outside fill with loud babbling and slamming of locker doors as the students pulled out their belongings. Constance breathed a sigh and leaned back in her comfortable computer chair, content to just sit for a moment before cleaning up the classroom.

An annoying sensation spread across her nose as the strand of light, strawberry blonde hair that was too short to join its brethren tickled her nose. She blew on it to move it away, and a small crackle of electricity sparked across the strand, briefly illuminating her forehead in bright pink.

She closed her eyes, letting them rest for a while, allowing a breath loose from her nostrils as she rested her head against the cushioned back of her chair. Now she could go home and relax for an entire week. Or at least as much as she could when she had about four classes worth of papers to grade and a six-month-old baby to take care of.

She opened her eyes and moved her gaze to a small, silver picture frame sitting near her computer speakers, a loving smile spreading on her face as she took in the picture placed fondly behind the glass. In the photograph was a mass of soft-looking pink blankets surrounding the small, round, rosy face of an infant. She had large brown eyes that stared half-dazed at the camera and light tufts of dark strawberry-blonde hair dusting her head.

This was the light of Constance's world, the reason why she would drop everything if necessary, the source of each day's happiness that had nothing to do with her job. This was her beautiful baby girl.

Suddenly, the screen of her computer began flickering, alternately changing from black to white while the green light on the tower began wavering as well. The fan inside kicked into overdrive for about three minutes before it died completely, the screen and green tower light sputtering off suddenly. Her computer had quit on her again.

"Shit," she swore under her breath while she repeatedly hit the on button on the monitor. The effort was in vain. The damn thing just refused to turn on. "Stupid piece of junk."

She sighed in frustration and sunk down into her chair, lightly pinching her nose before glancing at her classroom door quickly. She didn't see anyone. She got up and looked both ways down the hall, finding the corridor completely empty. Perfect.

Hurrying back to her computer, she touched the tower's on button once more, but adding no pressure whatsoever. Breathing out slowly, she focused on the computer. Her gray eyes watched as tiny little currents of electricity began sparking and crawling around her index finger, glowing bright pink, and shooting into the computer tower. The fan puttered once before purring to life, the button under her finger beginning to glow green once more.

Constance let a smile grace her lips as she removed her finger from the button, turning her attention onto the screen, which currently displayed the Windows 7 logo and a green loading bar. She had got it to work once more.

That was another thing about Constance Grisham. She wasn't what you would call normal. An incident when she was sixteen had exposed her to incredibly high levels of Gamma radiation. At the time, she hadn't known that it was Gamma radiation specifically, but she remembered the doctors telling her parents that she wasn't likely to survive due to the alarming amount of radiation in her system.

But she did survive. And it was only two years later that she had discovered the effects of her radiation poisoning. She discovered that she could manipulate some sort of energy at will. It became her self defense mechanism, her way of protecting herself. And when her father had been mugged and killed a few months later, she began to use her newfound abilities to fight crime, becoming what many people her age have had dreams about becoming.

A Superhero.

A knock from the direction of the door broke her out of her thoughts. She sat up straight and pushed a stray strand of her hair behind her ear to look at who was standing in the doorway, thinking it might have been her boss or another member of the faculty or even a student come to ask her a question. It was none of these.

Instead, it was a dark skinned man dressed in a black trench coat, black sweater, black pants, and black boots. Basically he was decked out in all black from shiny, bald head to steel-toed foot. A black eye patch covered his left eye, where about three jagged, blackened scars could be seen peeking out from the edges of the eye patch.

Constance's self defense instincts kicked in, and she felt wary of this man. She didn't know who he was or what he wanted from her, and he was definitely the intimidatingly suspicious type. She could feel the prickles of electricity hum through her veins, the essence of hidden power ready to burst forth at any signs of a problem. But it was dangerous to do so here at a school, where the faculty, custodians, and still remaining students could become witnesses. And she knew she shouldn't jump to conclusions. Maybe he just wanted to talk.

"Long day?" he asked in his loud, deep tone. She wanted to narrow her eyes at the man, to subtly let him know she didn't trust him, but that probably wouldn't be a good idea. He could turn out to be an enemy. She really didn't want to have one of those. She sighed and nodded.

"You have no idea." she replied back cautiously. The man strode leisurely into the room with his hands behind his back, his one dark brown eye trained on her. She stood up from her chair, picking up the collected research papers she had discarded earlier and sliding them carefully into a manila folder. She pretended to be distracted with putting things away. "Teaching teenagers that are more focused on gossiping and talking and not paying attention can make one feel that way."

"I wouldn't know." The man stopped in front of her desk, his gaze not breaking even as she walked to her little supply closet to dig out her bag and jacket. "Teenagers and I don't get along real well."

"Can't imagine why." Constance muttered under her breath.

The man said nothing for a while, but he pulled a black, rectangular object from under his arm–she hadn't noticed that it was there when she first saw him. It blended in with his clothes–and pulled a screen from it. He flipped it over and reattached it to the original object, creating a sort of laptop computer. He pushed a few buttons on the base, making the screen project a seal of a modernized bird, and typed a few codes onto the screen.

Constance watched as the screen lit up with the picture of a pulsing, blue cube. "What's that?" she questioned the man, her distrust waning slightly to make way for her piqued interest. The cube looked like something out of a science fiction movie, and that fascinated her because she was a sucker for science fiction. The seal of the bird stayed fresh in her mind; she had seen that somewhere before, but she just couldn't remember where.

The man fixed his serious gaze on her, his face completely stony. "Miss Grisham, my name is Nick Fury." he didn't answer her question. She opened her mouth to interrupt and repeat the question, but she thought better of it and closed it again. "I am the director of a government agency known as S.H.I.E.L.D."

The name suddenly clicked with the bird seal. That's where she remembered it from! The seal was S.H.I.E.L.D.'s logo, and along with the recognition came some very unpleasant memories of her accident. She tried to block them out as she fixed the man–Director Nick Fury–with an unreadable expression.

"What do you want from me, Director Fury?" she asked him, an edge in her voice. She still didn't trust him even though she knew who he was. The memories were still trying to force their way into her mind, but she quickly put up a shield–a force field more accurately–around her brain.

"We want your assistance." he replied. Constance let the answer float around in her head as she set her bag and jacket down, bringing forth a whole mess of questions. Hopefully he would be willing to answer.

"Our sources you give you credit for a lot of crime-fighting in this community, Miss Grisham." Fury continued, handing the computer to her. She sat down in her chair again and set the screen in her lap, her gray eyes beginning to scan the text written next to the picture of the glowing cube. "We believe your unique abilities will be helpful in this mission."

"What kind of mission is it?" she didn't take her eyes of the screen, and she didn't even guess how he knew of her powers. He did work for S.H.I.E.L.D., which was an intelligence agency, after all. Her curiosity was spiking considerably, becoming more and more fascinated by the cube.

"A saving the world kind." Fury stated gravely. Constance looked up at him, words failing her. He pointed to the picture of the cube. "This is the Tesseract. Its power has the potential to wipe out the entire planet, and it could also be the key to unlimited sustainable energy."

Constance felt amazed. This little cube, which she read was only slightly bigger than her hand, had this much destructive and yet beneficial power? Deduction told her that this was not some lab experiment gone wrong, and it was most definitely not from this planet.

"So what's the problem?" she asked. There had to be something else other than the whole 'it could destroy the world' part. Otherwise, why would Fury hope it could be used for energy purposes if it was so dangerous?

"It's been stolen." was Fury's answer. He pressed a finger to the back of the screen and swept it to the left. The Tesseract information whipped away with the motion of his finger and was replaced by a picture of a man. He had a thin face, green eyes, and hair that was slicked back, shoulder length, and flipped outwards at the ends. The word _WANTED _was scrawled across the top of the screen above the man's photo. Next to his picture was a name.

_Loki Laufeyson._

"What does this Loki want with the Tesseract?" she wondered. If an agency like S.H.I.E.L.D wanted to find this guy, then he must have done something incredible to get their attention, and was planning on doing something even bigger with this energy cube.

"We don't know." Fury admitted, folding his arms in front of his chest. "All we do know is that it can't be something good, and that he brainwashed two of the finest men I know into doing his dirty work."

At this, a chill ran up Constance's spine. Brainwashing was no bueno all together. She didn't know that from experience, but she knew it for a fact of common sense. To take someone's mind and make them think completely different thoughts from their own was a hauntingly terrible prospect. She shuddered at the thought of it.

Constance said nothing for a while as she scrolled to the next bit of information. Two pictures showed up this time, both male. One looked older and scruffier with dark hazel eyes and a tired look about him. The other was younger and clean-shaven, but he was worn and with an almost haunted look in his pale blue eyes. At the top of the screen, the word _WANTED_ was replaced with the word _COMPROMISED_.

These must be the two men that had been brainwashed, Constance thought.

"Those two are the personnel that were brainwashed." Fury confirmed what she had originally suspected. "Dr. Eric Selvig and Agent Clint Barton."

Constance read the text detailing their enslavement with solemn curiosity. Apparently this Loki character had had some sort of magical staff with him, and he simply just touched their chests with the tip of it. He had them following him within seconds. Another uncomfortable shiver ran up Constance's spine.

The screen went dark then, and Fury took the computer from her and began folding it back up, slipping it back into the confines of his sleek trench coat when he was finished. Constance twiddled her thumbs in her lap and bit her lip in thought.

"So," she looked up at him. "What is it that you want me to do for this mission?"

"We believe that you could be of help in retrieving the Tesseract once we locate it. " Fury answered her, clasping his hands together behind his back, staring down at her carefully with his one good eye. "As much as we know of Loki, he will most likely put up a fight. You, along with the others that will be helping you, just might be able to disable him long enough to grab the Tesseract and go."

Constance, despite never having dealt with anything major, knew that it wouldn't be that simple. From what she read in the information gathered about Loki, he wasn't someone to mess with. He was dangerous, and Fury was asking her to put her life on the line for this Tesseract?

"How long would it take to find the Tesseract?" she asked him as thoughts of her daughter began entering her brain, and what would become of the sweet little baby if she accepted this mission.

"Could be hours," Fury shrugged. "Or it could be weeks. Months even."

There's no way I'm leaving my baby for that long, Constance thought as she continued to chew on her lip. She weighed all the options in her head, making decision after decision on how things would pan out.

She let her lip go, finally coming to a conclusion. She couldn't believe she was going to do this, but if it means keeping her daughter safe from a possible world threat, then so be it.

Constance sighed as she made her decision. "Okay, Director. I'll go. When will I be leaving?"

"As soon as your able to, Miss Grisham." Fury said. Constance could see a small flicker of relief in his brown eye, and she realized that he had been almost desperate in getting her on board for this mission.

"Give me time to get home and get mine and Katia's bags packed, and I should be–"

"Hold up." Fury interrupted, eyeing her in stern confusion. Who said anything about her bringing someone along? "Katia?"

"Yes, Katia." Constance repeated, equally as confused. If S.H.I.E.L.D. had an entire profile on her life and abilities, then surely it mentioned her having a baby somewhere in there. It just made sense. "My daughter. I can't leave her all by herself."

Fury suddenly didn't know what to do. No one had known she had a daughter to take care of. That meant her profile was not up to date, and it also posed one colossal problem: S.H.I.E.L.D. Headquarters was not a daycare center, and it most certainly wasn't the place for a kid to be running around.

"Would you be able to quickly find someone to take care of her while you're gone?" Fury asked.

"No." Was Constance's simple answer. "She's only six months old, Director. I can't leave her with someone–"

"Miss Grisham, S.H.I.E.L.D. Headquarters has no room for a child, let alone an infant." He told her sternly. She seemed to not be getting the picture. A baby would definitely _not_ be allowed.

Constance was starting to get annoyed with Director Fury. He didn't understand the first thing about being a mother. She couldn't leave her precious little one for days or even months. She was six months old for Christ's sake! And besides, what if Loki somehow escapes after they somehow beat the sludge out of him? He could somehow find out about Katia and kidnap her. What then?

Constance stood up and looked the Director straight in the eye, her own gray orbs hard. "Then you can find someone else, Director Fury, because I'm not leaving Katia behind."

Fury breathed out of his nose in frustration. "How would she be entertained?"

"I'll keep her with me for as long as I'm not busy, and I'll bring all of her favorite playthings." Constance answered automatically.

"And what about her necessities?"

"I can bring all the things I need. If it'll be months until the Tesseract is found, then a few trips to the store would have to happen." She folded her arms in front of her chest and raised an eyebrow.

Fury thought long and hard about this, massaging his hands behind his back as he did so. Constance would just keep arguing if he tried to bring up a reason why her daughter shouldn't come. She had already made it blatantly clear that she was not going to leave without the baby. And they needed her abilities for this badly.

Finally, Fury sighed heavily. "Very well, Miss Grisham. You're daughter can come with you." He submitted.

Constance sat down and smiled in satisfaction. "Thank you, Director." She said.

"Just make sure that she stays out of everyone's way." He told her sternly.

Constance smile turned into one of amusement. "Oh, don't worry, Director." She chuckled, thinking fondly of her baby. "It's not hard to keep Katia occupied."

She stood up once more and grabbed her jacket, slipping it on just as Fury began heading for the classroom door. This could actually be fun, she thought. A little getaway for her and Katia. Of course, someone will have to watch her when she went to confront that Loki guy, but she assumed she could find a mother somewhere in the S.H.I.E.L.D. personnel who hopefully wouldn't mind shirking their duties to watch a baby.

"There's a packet waiting for you at your house." Fury tossed over his shoulder as he walked out. "An agent will be there as well."

Constance nodded, knowing full well that he couldn't see her, and brought her computer out of sleep mode to quickly save the document she was working on. She sent it to herself via e-mail so she could work on it while she was gone, briefly beginning to wonder how she would be paid for her teaching job if she was gone for months like Fury had guesstimated.

She turned to the door in hopes that he was still there so she could ask him, but he was already gone. She went to the door and looked out into the hallway to see of she could catch up to him, but he wasn't there either.

Boggled with how he could have possibly disappeared that fast, she shut her computer down and grabbed her bag. She turned out the lights and shut the door, walking down the hallway to the faculty parking lot.

Little did she know that from that point onward, her life was about to change.

* * *

**And that be a wrap! Whad'ja think? Was a bit rushed at the end in my opinion but ehh what the hell.**

**See I TOLD you it would be different! Wasn't expecting that, now were you?**

**Next update should be in the next week or so, depending on how busy I am with school and stuff. Plus Thanksgiving is coming up, so yeah.**

**Reviews would be lovely and would make my day. Constructive criticism would be kool (but just be NICE about it!) And pleae flamers, Don't waste your time. Don't like, don't read. Simple. **

**See you guys next time!**

**~H.E.T.**


	3. Chapter 3: Dr Banner I presume?

**Hola mis amigos! It's update time again!**

**This one took me a while to figure out, cause I kept changing how it started, but I think I've got it!**

**Oh, and if you havent noticed, I uploaded a cover picture for this bad boy :D And yes, I did draw it. The woman, whom I'm sure you can guess, is Constance. The green guy needs no explanation (obviously) and the little one is Katia. Isn't she just the cutest little thing?!**

**DISCLAIMER: I do not own the Avengers. This amazingly awesome movie belongs to MARVEL. I only own Constance and Katia!**

**Hope you guys enjoy!**

* * *

Constance's mind was reeling when she drove her truck down the main road into town. She felt basically on auto-pilot, steering and slowing down almost robotically as she made her way to her home on the other side of the little community. The route was familiar enough that she could concentrate on her restless musings and still drive safely.

She kept thinking about her encounter with Fury. All the information he had dumped on her was making question after question pop into her head and they refused to go away. What exactly was this Tesseract thing? Where did it come from? Where did this Loki take it? Why did he take it? And why would an intelligence agency want to create clean energy for everyone to use?

She would have to get some answers from Fury the next time she saw him. That was the only way she could clear things up and settle her mind.

Constance's mind had just begun focusing on getting home when the van in front of her suddenly slammed on their brakes. She gasped aloud and smashed her foot down on her own brake pedal, stopping her truck in its place before the two vehicles got involved in a fender-bender. She lurched forward, thanks to inertia and Newton's laws of motion, only to have her seatbelt stop her from slamming into the wheel and certainly crash through the windshield.

Her heart was pounding against her rib cage as she settled back into her seat and sat there in brief shock, breathing heavily. Once recovered, she then proceeded to angrily honk her truck's horn at van in front of her. "Asshole!" she yelled to no one in particular.

Finally, after recovering from narrowly avoiding getting involved in an accident, Constance was out of town and going down the familiar road to her house. She breathed a sigh of relief, feeling the tension leave her body at the thought of relaxing at home for a few minutes before leaving to God knows where.

As soon as Constance pulled into her driveway, she was greeted by an unusual sight. A young woman stood on her front porch with her arms folded across her chest, watching her intently with an firm, brown-eyed gaze as the green 1997 GMC Sierra slowed to a stop in the gravel. She was dressed in all black, not unlike Director Fury had been, but instead of a sweater, jeans, and a trench coat, she wore a sleek bodysuit. Her dark hair was pulled back into a bun, keeping most of it out of her thin face.

This must be the agent Fury was talking about, Constance thought as she grabbed her bag and exited the truck. The door groaned loudly as it shut, but that was to be expected. The old thing's been around for about fifteen years.

When she reached the porch, the woman began to speak. "Hello, Miss Grisham." she spoke in a quick, sharp voice that Constance couldn't help noticing was a bit on the nasally side. "I am Agent Maria Hill, second in command."

Constance raised an eyebrow. Fury sent his second in command to collect me, she questioned in her mind. That's...odd.

"We don't have much time." Agent Hill informed her, dropping her arms to clasp her hands behind her back. She kept her watchful gaze trained sharply on Constance the whole time. "We need to leave as soon as possible. Get your things together."

"Alright, just give me a few minutes." the school teacher sighed as she fumbled with her ridiculous lanyard of keys and stuck it into her bag. She had color-coded them all with little squares of duct tape so she could easily tell which key went to what lock. Green was for her truck, red was for her classroom door, yellow was for the entrance to the high school, and purple and green-polka dots were for her house. But she didn't need to use them at the moment. The door was unlocked, and that was only because someone was inside.

Constance opened the storm door and turned the knob to enter the house. "I'm home, Mrs. McIntire!" she called as she stepped into the living room, Agent Hill close behind. Mrs. Peg McIntire was Constance's neighbor, who she always asked to baby-sit Katia while she was away at work. Mrs. McIntire didn't ask for payment, and insisted that she didn't need it, knowing that Constance required the money more than she did.

"Oh, hello Constance!" a cheery, elderly English voice greeted her from the couch. An old woman was sitting on the far left cushion, her bifocals pushed up the bridge of her nose and a worn book held carefully in her gnarled, wrinkly fingers. She gave Constance a warm smile as she closed her book and moved to stand up. "How was work today?"

"Hectic as usual." Constance replied. "Did Katia behave today?"

"Oh, of course, dear. She always does, that sweet little girl." Mrs. McIntire moved over to where the two younger women were standing. She seemed to not have yet noticed Agent Hill impatiently watching them converse. Either that or she did notice the agent and was just pointedly ignoring her. She wasn't always your typical, sweet old lady. "I put her down for a nap a little while ago and sat down to read. She should be waking up any moment now."

"Good." Constance said, biting her lip as she fiddled with her bag. Now was the time she needed to explain to the older woman that she would be gone for a while.

Now it seemed that Mrs. McIntire was finally going to acknowledge Agent Hill's presence, because she immediately smiled at the dark haired woman. "And who might you be, dear?" the elderly lady asked.

"Maria Hill." Agent Hill answered almost stiffly, thinking quickly to come up with a lie so she could keep her true self a secret. But who was this sweet old woman going to tell? "I'm a…friend of Miss-er…Constance's from high school."

"Oh, well what a pleasure to meet you, Maria." Mrs. McIntire said happily. Maria now felt almost guilty for lying, but she had to do what she had to do.

"Likewise, Ma'am." She mumbled.

Mrs. McIntire turned back to Constance. "Would you two like some iced tea, dears?" she asked. "I made some earlier if you would like a glass."

Constance smiled almost sadly. "Oh, I would love to, Mrs. McIntire–"

"Now, Constance Grisham, what have I told you about that?" the older woman scolded in good humor. In reality, she was very hard to anger. "Call me Peggy."

"Right, Peggy, sorry." Constance almost laughed, but she remembered that she had to be serious at the moment. "I would love to have some, but I'm afraid I can't. I'm going on a trip…a last minute spring break vacation."

"Oh?" Peggy questioned.

"Yeah," Constance lied smoothly, feeling guilt swirl in the pit of her stomach for fibbing. She hated to lie to Peggy, who was more like a mother to her than her real mom was. "You know, just to get away from it all. I'm also going to be taking Katia with me, so I just wanted to let you know."

Peggy smiled and waved her wrinkly hands dismissively. "Oh, it's fine, dear. You deserve a little vacation with that darling baby of yours."

Constance beamed then, realizing that she could possibly have a long time before the Tesseract was found to just spend the day with Katia. It was something she didn't get to do during the school year, except on Saturdays and Sundays and holidays. "Yeah, I'm really looking forward to it."

"I can imagine." Peggy mused fondly.

Agent Hill subtly cleared her throat then, reminding Constance that they needed to leave as soon as possible. "Well, Peggy, I need to get packing."

"Of course, dear." Peggy moved towards the front door, flashing a smile over her shoulder at the two younger women. "Enjoy your trip, and be safe."

"Thank you." Constance replied, her own smile dropping slightly.

"And it was very nice to meet you, Maria." Peggy said to Agent Hill, who shifted awkwardly from foot to foot.

"Likewise, Ma'am." She repeated. Peggy nodded in acknowledgement before slipping out the door and making the journey to her house across the street. Agent Hill then turned to Constance with her stern look back in place. "We need to get moving."

"Okay." Constance sighed, walking into the hallway and down towards her bedroom at the far end. "Let me just get–"

At that moment, a faint cry sounded from a closed door off to the right of the hallway. Constance moved towards the door, which was decorated in pretty pink teddy bear stickers and hand-painted flowers, and turned the knob. The door creaked open to reveal the bright and sunny colors of a nursery, and the baby squirming and crying out with frustration in the crib situated near the far wall.

Constance's face immediately brightened while her baby fussed, and she hurried over to the dark wood crib and reached in over the side.

"Hi sweetie!" she cooed in a higher pitched voice. She slid her hands under Katia's arms and lifted her up and out of the crib, planting a kiss on the infant's head as she settled her in her arms. Katia's huge brown eyes gazed at her mother in curiosity. "Did you have a nice nap?"

Katia reached up with one chubby little hand to touch Constance's face, oblivious to what her mommy had just said. She then proceeded to grab the loose strands of hair that had slipped out of the hair clip she had clamped in this morning.

Constance held her daughter closely and gently, sighing on content. "Mommy missed you." she whispered, placing another little kiss on the baby's soft forehead. "Yes I did. Did you miss mommy, Katia?"

Katia's reply came in the sound of an adorable little gurgling noise.

Constance knew Katia couldn't really answer her; she just liked talking to her daughter. She continued to do so as she went around the room, filling a large baby bag with clothes, diapers, pop-up books, and all of Katia's favorite toys. The toy the baby played with the most, a little pink bear with a white bow sewn around it's neck and a red heart stitched into its belly, was given to and clutched in Katia's tiny fingers as her mother buckled her into her carrier.

Constance breathed an exaggerated sigh as she gazed into Katia's eyes. The baby was watching her intently, idly playing with her stuffed bear while sucking on a pacifier. Her mother's heart just melted at the sight of those huge doe-like eyes on her. They were such a pretty brown, almost like freshly melted chocolate, accented with beautifully long eyelashes, and they sparkled with life and curiosity. When Katia was first born, it had come as a sort of shock to Constance that her baby had brown eyes. But she grew to love them, and from then on assumed that the chocolate color came from Katia's father.

She smiled at her daughter and poked her little nose gently with her finger, earning a giggle from the baby and causing the pacifier to tumble out of her mouth. Constance let out a little laugh of her own and stuck the binky back into Katia's mouth before standing up and picking up the carrier, shouldering the baby bag as she walked out the nursery door to her bedroom.

* * *

Katia had fallen asleep again after their transport vehicle–a large, advanced, expensive-looking Quinjet–had taken off from a secluded field a few miles away from the small Ohio town where Constance lived. She had since remained asleep, and Constance was ever so grateful. She was sure that if the baby had made even the slightest sound, the three S.H.I.E.L.D. agents on board probably would have begin to rethink the agreement Fury made to letting her come along. But nope, she was peacefully snoozing in her carrier, her tiny, round face peeking out of her pink teddy-bear blanket., a sight that even made near-cold-hearted Agent Maria Hill feel all warm inside.

Constance smiled and faintly brushed the soft tufts of dark strawberry blonde hair that covered the baby's head. She was dimly aware of Agent Hill watching her ever move through secretive glances over the screen of her expensive looking laptop.

The younger woman fought the urge to roll her eyes as she drew back her fingers from Katia's sleeping head, turning her attention on the sleek, brand-new-looking tablet device. Agent Hill had given it to her once they boarded the Quinjet, and briefly explained its purpose. Constance had realized that this was the packet Fury had told her about. She had to enter a password to access the information, which Agent Hill had supplied. Now here she sat, scrolling through the top secret dossiers of the "special personnel" S.H.I.E.L.D. had hired for this job.

The first two profiles were of S.H.I.E.L.D. agents, one man and one woman. Constance recognized the man instantly from her encounter with Fury. He was Agent Clint Barton, one of the personnel that had been brainwashed by that one guy, what's-his-name…oh yeah, Loki. In this profile of him, Agent Barton was wearing sunglasses in his picture and looking like quite the badass with a quiver full of arrows slung over his shoulder. It said he had a killer shot with a bow, giving him the title 'Hawkeye'.

The other agent, the woman, placed a small frown on Constance's face. Her picture, even though it was apparent that she was beautiful, had her looking like she hated the world, her steel gray eyes glaring daggers at the camera man. Her thin face was framed by chin length, fiery red waves that curled at the ends. Her mouth was set in a seemingly permanent frown, making her look all the more menacing. Her description and even her name hinted that she was from Russia, and she had quite the dark history behind her. Her name was Natasha Romanoff, otherwise known as the 'Black Widow'.

The next profile showed a man with clean-cut, sandy blonde hair and blue eyes that gazed on in pure confusion. The information identified him as Captain Steven Rogers, a soldier that served in World War II. At first, Constance looked at that particular sentence in puzzlement, glancing from it to his picture and back again. This man had to only be either a few years older, her age, or a few years younger. He looked so young for someone who was supposed to be so old. She read on afterwards and discovered that his plane had crashed in the ocean back during the war and he became frozen in ice for the following seventy years. He had been found in recent years, perfectly preserved, and was thawed out, only to be discovered still alive. The text then went on to his deeds during the war as Captain America, the world's first superhero.

Constance scrolled on to the next report, and Constance found she already knew who this man was. The better question to ask, in fact, was who didn't know who Tony Stark was? You could find his face on the cover of nearly every newspaper, magazine, and tabloid. The genius billionaire at the head of a multi-million dollar company and man-whore extraordinaire, Tony was not your average "hero". He didn't keep his alter ego a secret, oh no. He showcased the hell out of it. Almost everyone in the world knew about his adventures and escapades as Iron Man.

She quickly read over her own dossier, which contained her staff picture from the high school yearbook and a brief, choppy description of her history and supernatural abilities. It's in desperate need of an update, she thought.

Finally, Constance came to the last account. The man in the picture was not looking at the camera. In fact, it looked like it was taken from a distance, and most definitely in secret. But it was actually a good quality picture, and she could see that this man was very handsome. He had curly and yet almost shaggy, black hair that was graying slightly near his temples and tan skin. Dr. Bruce Banner, as the description called him, was an expert in nuclear physics and currently practicing medicine in Calcutta, India. An accident a few years ago turned him into a monstrous beast with green skin an alarmingly dangerous "anger management" problem. At first, just by looking at the picture, Constance thought he looked fairly normal. Upon seeing a video attached to the profile and selecting it to watch, she could see that "anger management" was putting it nicely. Despite this, the description said that when he wasn't the big, beefy, green-colored ball of rage, he was easy to get along with and generally kind to others. That made Constance feel a lot better about him. And the summary said that the hulking creature he turned into was caused by gamma radiation, just like her and her powers.

Constance gazed at him for a moment longer before shutting down the tablet. She placed it on the empty seat beside her just as Katia made a soft grunting sound and shifted the blanked with her hands. Constance smiled tenderly and leaned down to press a loving kiss on the baby's soft skin. She tucked the blanket around her daughter to keep her warm as she slept and gently stroked her soft, chubby little cheeks.

"We're approaching Home Base, Ma'am." The Quinjet's co-pilot spoke to Agent hill over his shoulder. She nodded and closed the laptop, setting it neatly down on the seat beside her. Constance looked out of the pilot's window to catch a glimpse of S.H.I.E.L.D. home base, and her eyes nearly popped out of her head. She definitely was not expecting that.

The Quinjet was quickly approaching a large aircraft carrier floating in the middle of the ocean, looking very impressing and intimidating indeed. Just the place for a secret organization. It was definitely larger than any Navy carrier she'd seen, Constance was almost positive of that fact.

Swarms of S.H.I.E.L.D. personnel were running all over the place, getting some sorts of preparations in order as they flitted over the deck and air strips, guiding jets in and permitting ones to take off. The jet she was in was flagged to a specific spot while it slowed to a hover with its rotors and gracefully touched down on the air strip. Agent Hill stood up and stretched her back, almost smiling as her bones popped.

The engines began dying off and the ramp at the back of the jet lowered to the ground. Agent Hill gestured for Constance to follow her as she began making her way down the ramp, ordering the agents who rushed to her to take Constance's luggage to her room. Constance picked up Katia's carrier with both hands and began walking down the ramp after Agent Hill, dodging S.H.I.E.L.D. personnel going up as she stepped into the bright, April sunlight. When she reached the second in command, she found her speaking with the red-headed woman Constance had read about in her packet, Black Widow.

Agent Hill noticed Constance's appearance and turned to her. "Agent Romanoff," she spoke in an almost monotonous voice, looking to actually be quite bored. "This is Constance Grisham."

"Hi." Constance said politely, smiling as Agent Hill walked away. She had more important things to attend to anyway.

"Hey." Agent Romanoff replied with a small smile. She gestured with her head to Agent Hill's retreating back. "Don't mind her. She has a stick shoved up her ass."

Constance only nodded in agreement, not knowing what to say in response. She watched as Natasha's eyes drifted down to the baby carrier in her hands, seeing Katia's little sleeping face peeking out of her fuzzy blanket. She looked back up curiously, also looking to be a bit confused. "Who's this?" she asked.

"This is my daughter, Katia." Constance shifted her grip on the carrier and looked down at her baby with a smile. Katia shifted slightly in her blankets again, making her mother's smile widen as a small hand appeared to rub at her face. Constance's heart melted from the adorable-ness. "I just couldn't leave her behind with a babysitter. I didn't know how long I would be gone, and I would feel better if she was with me."

Natasha nodded, pushing the slight feeling that a baby didn't belong here out of her mind. It was obvious that Constance was hardly going to let the infant out of her sight. Besides, maybe now that they baby was here, Constance could focus more on what she has been tasked to do.

"That's understandable." Natasha said, and it was. There were a lot of mothers in S.H.I.E.L.D.'s ranks, and they were always so worried about their children because of their line of work. She could only guess Constance was feeling the same. "She's a cute little thing." she commented almost awkwardly. Admitting something was cute was hard for the Black Widow to do.

Constance smiled. "Yes she is." she looked lovingly down at the baby again. "She's my little princess."

Natasha stared at the baby a bit more before gesturing for Constance to follow her. They walked the short distance to the site where another Quinjet was easing in for a landing. They stood a good distance away until the rotors cut off and the back opened up.

Two men made their way down the ramp together, dodging the personel heading up the ramp. One of them had neatly cut, sandy blonde hair and looked to be around Constance's age, dressed in a flannel shirt tucked into khaki pants, and looked very familiar. The other man looked older and was wearing a suit with his S.H.I.E.L.D. I.D. Clipped to the lapel. The two women walked over to meet them.

"Agent Romanoff, Miss Grisham," the man in the suit, identified from his badge as Agent Phil Coulson, began the introductions. He seemed teeming with almost well suppressed excitement as he looked to the other man. "This is Captain Rogers."

Captain Rogers smiled at the women in a friendly manner. "Ladies." he said politely in greeting, and it was then that Constance recognized him. Forties mannerisms, clean haircut, clean shaven, and smartly dressed. She remembered reading about him in the files Fury gave her. He was the Captain Steven Rogers, otherwise known as Captain America!

"Hi." Natasha said in an almost bored tone. Constance waved at him in response, a friendly smile in place. Agent Coulson walked away from their little group, a bit reluctantly it seemed, after Natasha said something to him about a face trace.

"Hi." Constance mimicked, pushing a stray strand of hair behind her ear. "It's a pleasure to meet you, Captain Rogers."

"Likewise, Miss Grisham." He returned, stuffing his hands into his jacket pocket. "You can call me Steve."

"Alright, Steve." She said with a grin. "Then you call me Constance. Or Connie. Whichever you prefer."

Steve nodded absently as his blue-eyed gaze traveled down to the sleeping baby in the carrier she was holding. "Cute baby." He commented, the smile creeping onto his face at the adorable sight. "Are you watching her for someone?"

Constance laughed. Of course Steve wouldn't think Katia was hers. He came from a time when single-parenthood was only if the other was off at war or dead. Any other was almost unheard of or even frowned upon. But she wasn't worried. This was the 21st century, and even if Steve didn't approve, she knew he would know he would have to get over it.

"No." she shook her head with a smile. "She's my baby."

Constance watched as his facial expression changed from adoration to confusion in two seconds flat. "She is?" he asked. She could see the questions he wanted to ask in his eyes. Why did she bring her daughter on board this boat? Where was her father?

"Yeah." Constance replied. "It's a long story." She answered his unasked questions.

"Oh…" Steve murmured awkwardly, not really knowing what to say. He scrambled to come up with something. "Well, uhh…she really is cute."

Constance couldn't help but laugh again. "Thank you, Steve." She said.

"So, Cap," Natasha began speaking, momentarily forgotten by both Steve and Constance in the midst of their idle chit-chat. She began leading them away from the second Quinjet to the middle of the main airstrip, wearing an amused smirk on her face. "It was quite the buzz around here, finding you in the ice."

"I bet it was." Steve commented, looking about, taking in his surroundings. Constance checked on Katia again, smiling when she noticed the infant was beginning to wake up. She hummed softly in adoration before turning back to the banter between Captain America and the Black Widow.

"I thought Coulson was going to swoon." Natasha added with a snort. She looked to Steve, one eyebrow raised in addition to her entertained expression. "He ask you to sign his Captain America trading cards yet?"

"Trading cards?" Steve asked with a small smile, looking as amused as Natasha was. Constance chuckled. It seemed that that man that had been with them earlier, Agent Phil Coulson, was a bit of a Captain America fanboy.

"They're vintage." Natasha informed, smiling. "He's very proud."

Up ahead, a man in gray pants and a brown blazer was looking around at the mess of jets and planes, but at the same time was trying to dodge the many S.H.I.E.L.D. agents bustling about.

"Dr. Banner!" Steve called to the man. He turned, giving them a better view of his face than what the picture on his profile showed. He looked nervous and apprehensive as he made his way over to them, his brown eyes cautions as he moved to shake Steve's hand with an awkward smile. This must have been Dr. Bruce Banner, otherwise known as that big, hulking green creature Constance saw in the video.

"Oh, yeah, hi." He spoke in a slightly hoarse voice as he let go, not even bothering to greet Natasha. Constance got the feeling that the two had met before. "They told me you were coming."

"Word is you can find the cube." Steve said when he let go of Dr. Banner's hand. The good doctor smiled a little shyly as he looked around, a rather cute little gesture that for some reason made Constance's heart flutter ever so slightly. It also vaguely reminded her of the stirring baby in the carrier she was holding. She knew Katia was too young to feel or even display shyness yet, but just the way that the smile nearly crinkled up his eyes reminded her of an adorable smile she saw displayed a few times on her daughter.

"Is that the only word one me?" he asked as he wrung his hands nervously. He looked as if he was checking to see if they could be heard by others. Constance could see that he was a bit paranoid.

"Only word I care about." assured Steve with a grin.

Dr. Banner nodded, seeming to have relaxed only slightly. He gestured around them at the rushing people scurrying here and there with various pieces of equipment or running together in straight lines as a type of exercise. "It must be strange for you." He commented. "All of this."

Steve shrugged with a friendly smile. "Well, actually, this is sort of familiar."

"I see." the doctor murmured. Constance tilted her head, catching his attention and making him turn to her, noticing her for the first time. She smiled comfortingly.

"Hi." she spoke, shifting Katia's carrier to one hand in order for her to extend the other one to the man. He came closer to her, and she noticed that at her height of 5'3", the top of her head was level with his nose. He was on the short side, like her. That was a comfort. "I'm Constance Grisham. It's a pleasure to meet you, Dr. Banner."

"Hello." he repeated quietly, apprehensively taking ahold of her small hand with his larger, calloused one and giving it a small shake, flashing another cautious smile. Constance returned it reassuringly, squeezing his hand lightly in the hopes to get him to relax.

A small, annoyed grunt sounded near the ground, making both of them look down at the baby carrier in Constance's hand. Katia was now wide awake, and she was shifting underneath her blanket, trying to get it off of her. She grabbed ahold of one edge of the blanket and kicked weakly with her little feet, becoming successful as the blanket slid off of her and onto the ground. Constance laughed.

"You silly." She said to the baby. She set the carrier down and picked up the fuzzy blanket, covering Katia back up only half of the way, as it seemed she was getting a bit warm. Katia cooed while sucking on the ear of her favorite teddy bear, which Constance pulled from her mouth and replaced it with her pacifier. Her large and beautiful eyes looked up at Dr. Banner in curiosity.

The good doctor forced himself not to panic. Now not only was he in a place where many people were in danger, but a baby's life was on the line as well. Not to mention that the baby's mother (he assumed that's what Constance was) was making his body do strange things. His heart was fluttering ever so slightly, and he found it hard for his eyes to turn away from her. He decided then and there that fate must hate him.

Constance stood back up, brushing strands of hair behind her ear again as she smiled almost sheepishly at him. "Sorry about that." She said. "She can get a bit fussy."

"I can imagine." He replaced his apprehensive smile as he looked down at the infant, forcing his eyes to turn from Constance. She was still watching him intently as she sucked on the binky. The innocent, doe-eyed look she was giving him, even though he had just seen her for the first time, was almost enough to do him in. He couldn't help it. He was a sucker for cute little babies. "She's cute."

"Yeah." Constance smiled fondly down at her daughter with loving affection as the baby played with her toy. "She's my sweet little angel."

"Gentlemen, Miss Grisham, you three might want to step inside in a minute." Natasha spoke up, halting Constance's conversation with Dr. Banner.  
The two along with Steve looked to the red-head with a questioning gaze, to which Natasha only smirked knowingly. "It's gonna get a little hard to breathe."

At that moment, a loud, mechanical groan sounded from deep within the carrier, quickly accompanied by the hum of technology whirring to life and the sound of splashing salt water. An alarm sounded from somewhere on deck, and the crew once again began rushing about to the different planes, pulling masks over their heads and fastening things down.

"Is this a submarine?" Steve asked no one in particular. He began slowly walking towards the edge of the carrier, with Dr. Banner not far behind. Constance asked Natasha to watch Katia for a moment, setting the carrier down at the agent's feet, before jogging to join the two men.

"Really?" the doctor asked, although it sounded more like a statement. "They want me in a submerged, pressurized, metal container?"

Constance opened her mouth to ask what he meant by that, but shut it again as she remembered the green creature lurking somewhere inside him. Confined spaces would be bad on their own if that thing got loose. Being underwater would minimize chance for escape.

The three adults had reached the edge of the deck and peered down below them at the roaring ocean. It was a mess of white foam and crashing waves, and it seemed like a whirlpool had just suddenly began churning next to the ship. But something large and metallic began rising from the whirlpool, and with it came the scream of jet engines and the blasting of wind in their faces. Closer inspection revealed that the giant metallic thing was actually one of four giant rotors attached to the carrier's hull, not unlike the ones on the tips of the Quinjets' wings. The fan-like mechanisms inside were spinning furiously, sending salty sea spray in every direction and whipping their clothes and hair in every direction. And it also felt like they were gaining altitude.

Constance gasped when she realized what it actually was they were standing on. It wasn't a submarine. It was an _aircraft_.

"Oh, no this much worse!" Dr. Banner joked half-heartedly over the roar of the wind. They began to walk back to Natasha, ready to escape the chaos outside now that they knew what was going on. Constance picked up Katia's carrier once more, and Natasha led the three inside.

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**TA-DA! Chapter 3 is done! How was it?**

**Next chapter will have a little more of Bruce's POV in it I think, and also the awesomeness that is PHIL FREAKIN' COULSON!**

**I'll probably be updating here soon. Christmas vacation starts in two weeks, so I'll have tons more time then to dish out LOTS of chapters! :D Get excited! I already am XD**

**Oh, and if you havent already, I highly recommend you go read _The Mobile Barista_ by xSeashellGirlx no joke, it is probably the most FUCKING HILARIOUS fanfic you will EVER read! I read it and I quite literally DIED LAUGHING XD**

**I would love to get some reviews telling me what you think! Constructive criticism will be accepted (just PLEASE be nice about it!), and don't waste my time with flames, please.**

**Until next time, guys! See ya!**


	4. Chapter 4: Aboard the Helicarrier

**HOWDY EVERYONE! Merry belated Christmas :D**

**I wish I could've gotten this thing out sooner, but I was busy so much with Artisans (school show choir), Christmas parties, and other crap like that. But there is some good news: I GOT A LAPTOP FOR CHRISTMAS! So now I have no excuse for not being able to get on the computer! Which means more updates! YAY!**

**This chapter was uber hard for me to write for some odd reason. I just couldn't understand why I was having so much trouble making it flow. But I think I got it now :) And this chapter includes the awesomeness that is PHIL COULSON! WHOOOO!**

**Disclaimer: I do not own _the_ _Avengers_. This awesome movie belongs to MARVEL. I only own Constance and Katia. **

**Enjoy guys!**

* * *

The group of four walked quickly down the numerous, twisting hallways of the flying ship, which Constance now knew to be called the Helicarrier, thanks to Natasha. She had said that it was the main base of S.H.I.E.L.D. operations, and was now currently holding more personnel than normal due to the destruction of a base in Colorado.

"The portal that the Tesseract created, the one that Loki came through, was unstable and it collapsed in on itself. It took the entire base with it." Natasha explained when she had asked.

The red-headed agent led them down gray hallway after gray hallway, only occasionally looking behind her to see if they were still following. She didn't say much of anything on the entire trip to wherever they were going; only occasionally throwing a sentence or two over her shoulder when one of the three of them addressed her. Constance guessed they were either heading to the rooms they would be sleeping in for the duration of their stay, or they were headed to some other, more important place. Judging by the floor signs bolted to the walls that they passed, it wasn't the former.

Natasha guided them through a set of automatic doors that opened wide as they got near, casting a look back at the three of them as she strode into the room beyond. It looked sort of like NASA mission control, with all of the computers situated in neat rows. At front of the room was a gigantic window with an amazing view of white, puffy clouds and the ocean certainly thousands of feet below them sparkling in the sunlight. Near the door, the room was set up as a sort of meeting room, with a big, v-shaped, glass table and several comfortable looking chairs. Agents clad in blue S.H.I.E.L.D. uniforms were either seated all around the room at a computer with a headset, or they were hurrying from one place to another with top secret files and clipboards. It seemed that everyone had some sort of secretive job here. Constance was feeling a bit overwhelmed.

She spotted Agent Maria Hill standing on a small platform surrounded by a several high-tech looking touch screens. Her face was completely devoid of all emotion as she reverted to complete second-in-command mode and barked out orders to everyone that passed her.

"S.H.I.E.L.D. emergency protocol 193.6 in effect." She called loudly into the room, turning around with her hands on her hips. She seemed to have not noticed the three newcomers near the door. "We're at level, sir."

That's when Constance noticed Director Nick Fury standing in the middle of the room on his own platform, looking as intimidating as he did the day he stepped into her classroom. He looked very in charge surrounded by his own advanced touch screens, which were focused on anything and everything related to the whole Tesseract mission, as well as the technical readouts of the Helicarrier.

"Good." He nodded. "Let's vanish."

"Engage retro-reflection panels." Agent Hill called out. Constance raised an impressed eyebrow. So not only could this thing fly, it could turn invisible? It was like she had been dumped into one of her sci-fi movies. Way too cool.

It wasn't long before it was announced that the reflection panels were fully operational, and Fury turned around to address her, Dr. Banner, and Steve. "Gentlemen," he said, nodding to the three of them in turn. "Miss Grisham."

Steve walked towards Fury and almost dejectedly pulled out a wad of cash from his jacket pocket, unfolding a ten dollar bill from it and slipping it to the Director, who stared at it almost in amusement and stuffed it into his own pocket. Constance was now even more interested than before. Did Steve lose a bet or something?, she wondered as she watched the World War II soldier continue forward down the catwalk that stretched from Fury's platform to the big window.

She turned to watch Fury saunter slowly towards Dr. Banner and hold out a hand for him to shake. "Doctor, thank you for coming." He said sincerely.

"Thanks for asking nicely." Bruce sighed almost in defeat, accepting the Director's hand briefly. He cast his eyes uncomfortably around the room and wrung his hands in front of him. "So…how long am I staying?"

He sounds like he really doesn't want to be here, Constance thought to herself. He had a good reason though; what with that green mass of muscle he turns into when he gets angry. She figured he was nervous about being in a confined space, because even the littlest of things could set him off. And if he was set off, anyone in the Helicarrier could be a potential target. This thought caused her to look warily down at her daughter, who was contentedly sucking on her binky and playing with her teddy bear.

_Dr. Banner wouldn't hurt her intentionally_, she reminded herself, remembering how his nervous face has softened when he looked at Katia. _You need to think positive. Nothing will happen. And even if it does, you have the ability to protect her.  
_  
Satisfied with her thinking, she tuned back in to the conversation at hand.

"Once we get our hands on the Tesseract, you're in the wind." the one-eyed man replied honestly. Constance suspected then that it was no bueno if you lied to the doctor. Don't want to risk pissing him off.

Dr. Banner nodded. "Well, where are you with that?" he asked, beginning to move towards the edge of Fury's platform as the dark skinned man gestured in that direction. Agent Phil Coulson was standing on the lower level, looking up at them with his arms folded across his chest, ready to report.

"We're sweeping every wirelessly accessible camera on the planet, such as cell phones or laptops." Coulson explained while Constance made her way over to stand in between Dr. Banner and the Director. She noticed Steve making his way back over, looking confused, intrigued, and awed all at the same time. Well, of course. All this technology was new to him. "If it's connected to a satellite, it's eyes and ears for us."

"That's still not going to find them in time." piped up Natasha in an almost worried tone, who was crouching on the catwalk near a particular computer. On the screen was what looked like a scanner, and it was scanning a particular picture that made Constance raise an eyebrow again in interest. She guessed that the scanner was the face trace Natasha had talked to Coulson about earlier, and right now it was scanning the picture of one of the compromised men, Agent Clint Barton. Interesting.

"You have to narrow your field." Dr. Banner said. He pulled off the blazer he was wearing, and Constance watched the gears beginning to turn in his head as he got to work. The blazer now removed, he was standing in a purple, button-down shirt that Constance suddenly thought looked very nice on him, and made him look all the more attractive than she had originally thought. He rolled up his sleeves as he transitioned from apprehensive to serious, causing the science nerd in her to stir pleasantly. He was in full out scientist mode, and she found that she liked it.

He turned to Fury. "How many spectrometers do you have access to?" he asked.

"How many are there?" was Fury's answer.

"Call every lab you know. Tell them to put the spectrometers on the roof and calibrate them for Gamma rays." instructed the physicist, slinging his blazer over one arm. "I'll rough out a tracking algorithm, basic cluster recognition. At least we could rule out a few places."

The words 'Gamma rays' clicked in Constance's mind, and her head jerked to look at Dr. Banner, who had a look of deep thought on his handsome face. That's right, she remembered. He was affected by Gamma radiation too.

This began to pique her interest again. She felt eager to ask him questions involving his exposure to the harmful rays and how he dealt with it before now. She wanted to feel that she wasn't alone. Even though her powers had done a lot of good for protecting her community and her daughter, and that she really liked her abilities, she still felt a little envious of the ordinary folk.

Maybe she could find companionship with Dr. Banner. Maybe now she could have someone to talk to about it and let her know she wasn't alone.

She suddenly became aware of the rather depressing turn her thoughts took, and shook her head slightly to clear it, her eyes looking down her daughter for comfort and spirit-lifting. Katia was looking about the room, inquisitive about all that was going on around her and not understanding one bit of it. Constance smiled lovingly down at the baby, feeling a whole lot better, before turning her attention back on the exchange between the Director and the doctor.

"Do you have somewhere for me to work?" Dr. Banner asked with a half-grin, a quirk that Constance was starting to find rather adorable on him, even in the short time she knew him. Fury nodded and turned around to look at Natasha, who stood up straight.

"Agent Romanoff, would you show Dr. Banner to his laboratory please." Fury instructed. Natasha traipsed forward, passing him, Constance, and the doctor and stopping at another door across the room that Constance hadn't noticed before.

"You're gonna love it, Doc." she said with a smirk as Dr. Banner moved closer to her position. "We've got all the toys."

Constance fought down an amused chuckle at that statement, wondering briefly if Bruce was the kind of guy who would act like a kid in a candy store when he saw the laboratory. She then quickly wiped the smile off her face and composed herself, not wanting to embarrass herself just as Fury turned to address her.

"It's good to have you on board, Miss Grisham." he said to her politely, though she thought she caught an underlying tone of annoyance. Then again, in the short time that she knew him, when did he _not_sound like that?

"Thank you for consenting to my condition, Director." she replied coolly, fixing a hard stare on the man, still remembering her own irritation from their first meeting. She could hold a mean grudge if she wanted to, and right now she felt like it just for the sake of being stubborn.

"Just make sure she doesn't get in anyone's way." He warned her. Constance fought the urge to roll her eyes. As if a young baby, six-months-old no less, could get in the way.

"I'll keep any eye on her at all times." She assured him, looking out of the corner of her eye at Natasha, Steve, and Dr. Banner, who were all watching their exchange curiously. She inwardly sighed and turned her eyes back to the one-eyes man in front of her.

"Very well." He sighed in defeat. He turned to look at what Constance guessed was his third in command. "Agent Coulson, would you please escort Miss Grisham to her new sleeping quarters. I'm sure she's tired."

Agent Coulson climbed a small flight of stairs to the higher platform and walked briskly over to her, a small, friendly smile on his face. She found herself smiling back as he gestured to the same door that Natasha and Dr. Banner were standing near.

"Right this way, Miss Grisham." he said. He began leading her through the door after Natasha and Dr. Banner, walking at a steady pace so as not to leave her in the dust. He pointed a few things out to her as they passed them, such as the cafeteria, restrooms, a gymnasium, and a rec room if she wanted to entertain herself while Katia was napping. Constance was beginning to feel awed at the extent of the facilities aboard the Helicarrier.

She was also feeling glad that Coulson had been tasked to show her her new room. She was actually feeling rather tired of all that had transpired that day, and she decided then that she was going to take a nap after getting settled in. After all, it wasn't like the Tesseract was going to be found that incredibly quickly.

They walked on in silence down a few empty hallways, passing storage rooms, offices, locker rooms, and other places that Constance had no name for. She looked around her in amazement, beginning to wonder just what all was in this giant metal behemoth.

"Your rooms are located on level E." Coulson told her as he made room for her to step inside of a large elevator. It was sleek and new looking, and had almost a hundred different floor buttons on the wall nearest to the door. "Dr. Banner and Captain Rogers will be housed on the same floor, so you and your daughter shouldn't get lonely."

She laughed as she stepped inside the elevator, feeling happy that the two men she came in with would be close at hand in case she wanted to talk to someone. As she situated herself near the wall to make room for the agent, she caught a glimpse of her reflection in the mirror mounted on the opposite wall.

She exhaled wearily as she took in her appearance. Short in stature with an isosceles triangle shape to her torso, heart shaped face, deep-set and tired gray eyes, attached earlobes with one piercing in each and another piercing apiece on the cartilage, and strawberry-blonde hair held close to her head with a large clip, with only a few strands escaping into her freckly face.

She rubbed her face and breathed through her nose, noticing how she looked as worn as she felt. A nap was most definitely in order now.

Finally, after what seemed like forever, they came to a hallway lined with different looking doors than she had seen on the way down. They stopped at one of the doors, which was made of metal and had the number 264E engraved in it. Coulson dug into his jacket pocket and pulled out a fancy-looking card. He handed it to her and she stared at it for a minute. It looked just like an I.D. badge; it had her picture and her basic information printed on it. But it also had two little arrows near one of the shorter sides. Then she realized that it was a keycard to get into her room. Cool.

She turned towards the door and slid the card in the proper slot by the handle, pulling it back out quickly and waiting for the go signal. The little light on it flashed green, and she turned the knob speedily, opening to door and giving her a first look at her new room.

It was a very spacious environment, with a large desk pushed to the opposite wall next to a flat screen tv. On the left was a large closet, complete with hangers and a few drawers. Next to that was a door that Constance assumed led to a bathroom. A queen sized bed stood on the right side of the room, looking plush and way beyond comfortable with its navy blue sheets. Her luggage and Katia's baby bag were sitting there waiting on the bedspread. And at the foot of a bed, of which Constance was sure none of the other rooms had, was a dark wooden crib just for Katia.

"I hope the accommodations are to your liking, Miss Grisham." Coulson spoke, almost startling her (she had momentarily forgotten he was there). She turned around and gave him a broad smile and a nod, letting him know exactly what she thought of it.

This room was perfect.

Coulson smiled back. "If there's anything you need, Miss Grisham, don't hesitate to find me." he said. "I'm usually at the helm with the Director or in my office two doors away."

Constance nodded once more, thinking of something right off the bat. "Thank you, Agent Coulson. I was actually wondering if you could tell me how to get to the lab Dr. Banner was shown to."

"Of course." Coulson replied. He relayed the instructions to her, also adding in how to get to other places from there, like the cafeteria they had passed earlier. "Would you like me to show you how to get there?"

"No thank you." She shook her head, shifting Katia's carrier around in her hands. "I'm actually going to take a nap for a while. Thank you for your help."

"You're welcome." Coulson turned and began walking away down the hall.

Constance stepped inside her room and closed the door, leaning against it for a moment, musing over all that had happened. It was only just yesterday that Constance was living a normal-or as normal as one could get with powers caused by Gamma rays-life, and now here she was, standing in a government aircraft and tasked with helping to retrieve a cosmic cube from another world. It was a lot to take in all at once.

She breathed a sigh through her nose and moved away from the door, walking over to the desk and setting Katia's carrier down on top of it. She unbuckled the straps and picked the baby up to cradle her in her arms. Katia reached up to play with her mother's hair, pulling on the loose strands that hung into her face and trying to put them in her mouth. Constance loosened the infant's grip and tucked the strands behind her ears.

"No, you can't eat mommy's hair, silly." Katia giggled and began babbling on to her in unintelligible noises. Her mother smiled lovingly and moved to put her in her new crib, planning to pop a movie in for Katia to watch while she napped.

It was then that Constance wrinkled her nose as something bad-smelling entered it. She didn't have to be a genius to figure out what it was. She sighed in fake exaggeration.

"I think someone needs changed." She said. All Katia did was continue to coo at her and giggle. Constance laughed along with her and went to dig the needed items out of the baby bag.

A nap could wait a little longer. Right now Constance was on mommy duty.

And she wouldn't have it any other way.

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**Randomest ending to a chapter I have ever written XD**

**I have been trying to avoid mentioning diaper changing like the plague for some odd reason. I guess I just think it's gross and awkward. But I realize now that I have to mention it at some points in the story. So that's why I put it at the end here.**

**And now to answer the first review I ever got!**

**AikoRose: I'm glad you like it! It does change it up, because even though putting an OC in is slightly overdone and annoying to some people, there are a lot of ways you can go with it, especially with Avengers! Right now for instance I'm still trying to decide if Constance should help Tony and Steve or get trapped with Thor in the later battle. And as for you wondering about Katia's daddy...well, you'll have to wait and see :3**

**Next chapter will be full on awesomeness, plus maybe some BrucexConstance fluff. Idk yet, we'll see.**

**Reviews would be greatly appreciated. I would love to see what you guys think! Constructive criticism is always welcome (but PLEASE be nice!). And please don't waste my time with flames, especially if you're flaming just to be a douchebag.**

**Until next time guys! Thanks :D**


	5. Chapter 5: Demos and Convos

**HEY YOU GUYS! IT'S UPDATE TIME AGAIN! BOOYAH!**

**As promised there's some BrucexConstance fluff in this chapter :) It's not much, cause it's so early in their relationship, but it's there!**

**Okay, now to answer some reviews :D**

**AikoRose: Haha maybe XD babies are sneaky like that. Admittedly, I couldn't look the first half of your review in the face for a while XD. Like I said, putting that in for me is awkward and gross for some reason. Well you got some fluff here, not much, but some! and I know what you mean. Haters gonna hate lol but everyone's entitled to their own opinion.**

**elohcin: Thank you so much! :) I put a lot of effort into it (not that I'm not with the other chapters, but you know what I mean XD)**

**Of-Thieves-and-Liars: Hmmm I don't know! We'll have to wait and see!**

**This chapter (to me anyways) was a bit rushed at the end. I just didn't want to keep you guys waiting (cause I know what its like to be frustrated when your favorite stories don't update for long periods of time)! So if you guys have any suggestions on how I could make it not so rushed, I'****d really appreciate it!**

**Disclaimer: I do not own The Avengers. This amazingly awesome movie belongs to MARVEL. I only own Constance and Katia :)**

**Enjoy!**

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After Katia was cleaned up and she had taken a small nap, Constance walked down the numerous hallways of the Helicarrier, in search of the lab that was currently being used by Dr. Banner. Remembering the instructions that Agent Coulson had given her, she back-tracked almost to the ship's helm, walked down hallway after hallway, took the elevator up one floor to Level D, and then continued on down more corridors. Katia said nothing the whole way there, content to just suck on her pacifier as her mother walked on.

Constance spent this time thinking of the questions that she wanted to ask the good doctor. She wanted so badly to ask him how he dealt with that other entity within him, how he kept him under control. To her it wouldn't seem easy trying to contain the other personality, especially one who was angry all the time. She also wanted to ask him a little about himself, because it appeared obvious to her that he didn't talk to people much. And that was a shame. He seemed like a very nice person, just like his profile had said.

With that thought in mind, Constance arrived at the door marked 'Level D Research and Development Facility'. This was the place, just like Coulson had described. It was very spacious, she observed as she looked through the window, and it looked like it was almost heaven for a scientist, what with all that shiny new equipment. She hesitated before going in, spotting him through one of the windows, watching him type at a computer, a deeply concentrated look in his handsome face. She suddenly felt a bit shy about talking to him, this good-looking genius of a man. _Wow,_ she thought to herself_, I haven't felt this nervous about talking to a guy in years. I'd forgotten what a pain in the ass it was._

She took a deep breath. _You're being silly, Constance. You can do this,_ she told herself. _You're just talking to the guy. It's not like your trying to tell him you love him or something._

She shook her head to clear her thoughts and steeled herself. She had wasted time out here dilly-dallying, and she needed to suck it up. She was a grown woman and had a daughter for God's sake! She shouldn't be acting like a skittish teenage girl!

So, taking another deep breath and smoothing her hair down, she walked inside.

Dr. Banner had taken no notice of her entrance and continued to type something on the computer, peering through the silver-rimmed glasses that sat on the bridge of his nose at the screen in front of him. Constance stopped a few feet into the room and just stood there, watching him work.

It was silent in the room for a few minutes, save for his fingers hitting the keyboard keys, until Katia seemed to think it was too quiet and made a squawking noise. This caused the good doctor to look up from his work and catch sight of her standing there holding her baby in her arms.

"Oh, hi." He spoke as that uneasy and yet shy smile from earlier inched onto his face.

She couldn't help but smile back, finding his own rather adorable and fitting for someone like him. "Hi." She replied.

He nodded his head in acknowledgment and began playing with his hands. "Grisham, right?" he asked.

"Yeah," she affirmed, shifting her baby to make holding her more comfortable. "Constance, actually."

"Oh, right, right." He nodded again. He shifted awkwardly where he stood. Constance almost giggled at the way he nearly curled up in shyness. _He's cute,_ she mused.

She then remembered that he was probably doing something rather important before she walked in. Probably beginning the search for the Tesseract. She mentally smacked her forehead. Fury would be pissed if she was distracting the doctor from his work.

"I'm sorry, am I distracting you?" she asked, almost praying to God that she wasn't.

"No, no, you're fine." His smile grew bigger and less shy and uneasy. He looked back at his computer and typed in a few more things. Because the screen was made so it was almost see through, she could almost make out what he was entering in. "I'm just starting to look for the Tesseract."

Constance nodded in understanding, walking forward a little more until she was standing by the lab table next to his screen. Scattered on top was a vast array of expensive-looking equipment and a few laptops that she deduced were plugged into the lab's main hard drive. The technobabble on the screen was beyond her understanding, but she knew it had to do with the spectrometers and the tracking algorithm he was talking about earlier. In one of the lower corners of the screen there appeared to be a 3D map of the world, and slowly little illuminated points were appearing on its surface. That must be all the different laboratories that S.H.I.E.L.D. knows.

"How will we know when the Tesseract is found?" she asked him, looking up from the back of the screen.

"Well, according to Dr. Selvig's notes on the Tesseract, the cube emits a certain signal made of low levels of Gamma radiation." He explained, shifting his gaze from the computer to her, gesturing to the computer with his hands to emphasize. She just barely registered the name as one of the compromised men as she tilted her head to show she was listening. "The computer should give us a warning once it's locked onto the correct signal. And it should give us the exact location of where we might be able to find it."

"Cool." She replied, gently pulling loose strands of hair from Katia's little fingers. "And then we'll get to go kick some tails."

Dr. Banner didn't have an answer to her statement, no offhanded response about how he wouldn't be fighting alongside everyone else and how it was dangerous if he did so. He unknowingly found himself staring at her face, especially her eyes. They were an interesting color of gray, like the color the clouds turned before a storm, and they almost sparkled with life (lame, Banner, _lame_). He felt he could almost get lost into them, because he found that they were actually quite…beautiful.

The Other Guy grunted from the back of Banner's mind, looking at her curiously through the doctor's eyes. He had not seen someone like her in a long time, not since that Betty woman that Banner had fawned over those few years ago. This little woman wasn't afraid to get close to them, and she didn't seem like she was pressing for information about him, or pushing the limits to see how far Banner could go. That Betty woman had, and it had annoyed both Banner and him to no end. But Banner had loved that Betty woman so much that he had tried to overlook it. _He, _on the other hand, was itching to be let out. He wanted to show that Betty woman that it made Banner uncomfortable. He didn't like it when Banner was uncomfortable.

This woman, Constance, seemed different than that. He didn't know why, but she just did. Maybe it was how she approached them, unafraid and curious about what Banner was working on. Then again, she hadn't asked about _him _yet.

Dr. Banner felt the presence in the back of his mind stir ever so slightly, peering at the woman in front of him, and he internally panicked. _No, no, no,_ he pleaded, as he tried to force the entity back._ Not now, not when there's an infant at stake!_

He was successful in his efforts, thank goodness. When the Other Guy settled down again, Bruce let out an inner sigh. The hulking one in the back of his mind grunted huffily.

_Stupid Banner_, it snorted. _Hulk just curious._

_Yeah, well Hulk don't need to come out now. _The good doctor retorted testily.

The Other Guy just rolled his eyes. _Hulk wasn't going to_, he grumbled.

"Umm…Dr. Banner, are you okay?" a soft voice broke him out of his debate with the presence on the back-burner of his brain, and he focused in on the current situation. Constance was still standing before him, concern written on her face as she took ahold of her daughter's hand to keep it still. He realized then that while he was arguing with the Other Guy, he had forgotten to take his eyes off of her, resulting in him staring at her uncontrollably for longer than necessary.

He felt his cheeks burn as the blood rushed to them in a blush. "Uhh, y-yeah." He stammered, embarrassed. "Sorry, Miss Gri-err, Constance."

Constance simply smiled softly at him, noticing his blushing and finding it rather cute. It was interesting, watching him staring at her. His eyes had taken on a hint of green, the other and more striking color seeping into the depths of chocolate brown.

Brown…his eyes were brown. Of course, it was a common color among the human race. There were a lot of people on the Helicarrier who had brown eyes, Fury included. For some reason, however, his eyes looked vaguely familiar. Perhaps she had seen them before somewhere. But that was absurd, because she had never met this man before in her life. But just maybe…

She brought herself back to earth before he even noticed she'd left._ Naw, that's silly_, she assured herself. Outwardly, she said, "It's fine, Dr. Banner."

He nodded vaguely, feeling a bit relieved that she wasn't feeling creeped out by him staring at her. He started feeling like he was enjoying her company, as it did start to get lonely here in this lab after about an hour or so. He may have been trying to escape civilization because of the Other Guy and not wanting to put people in danger, but one could get lonesome after spending so much time as a recluse. It was dangerous, yes, but he secretly longed for someone to talk to. And this woman before him could quite possibly give him just that.

Constance smiled at him, feeling the awkward sensation rolling within her to dissipate. Despite that small encounter, she felt she was taking delight in his presence. She was just getting ready to open her mouth and ask him something, to slowly get back into the topic of Gamma radiation and how it affected the both of them, when a voice overhead beat her to it.

"_Constance Grisham, please report to the Level C Training Facility immediately."_

She looked to the Doctor, a confused expression on her face. Why did they need her to train right now? The Tesseract hasn't been found yet. She inwardly sighed and shrugged as best she could, adjusting Katia in her arms yet again.

"Looks like they need me to do something." She said. She was reluctant to leave though. She wanted to talk to him some more.

"Yeah." He nodded, and she began grudgingly walking towards the door. She turned around to look at him with a hopeful expression as he began to resume his work.

"See you at dinner?" she asked.

He looked up at her, looking to be deep in thought. She took the time to brush a tuft of hair on Katia's head as she waited for an answer. Finally, his shy smile returned.

"Sure." He replied. She grinned at him.

"Good." She turned around to resume walking out the door, tossing with a smile over her shoulder, "See you later, Dr. Banner."

As the door slid shut behind her, the aforementioned doctor raised his hand to pinch the bridge of his nose, feeling his heart fluttering almost pleasantly in his chest. He hadn't the slightest idea as to what this sensation was at the moment, despite the fact that it felt vaguely familiar, and it troubled him ever so slightly.

"Oh boy..." he muttered.

* * *

Constance felt a chill go down her spine as she looked around the near-pitch-black room. The only source of light came from the small fluorescent lights lining the edges of the ceiling, and they cast an eerie glow about the room. It was deathly quiet in the room too, save for the soft huffs of her breathing as her heart rate quickened and adrenaline seeped into her blood. This scene reminded her of one in a horror/sci-fi movie. The main character would walk into a large room, such as the one she was currently standing in, hair on the back of their neck standing on end and they would have their weapon drawn. They would walk slowly to the center of the room, almost exactly like how she was standing now, and look around. They know in their subconscious that the alien or the robot or whatever is causing mayhem is hiding in the room somewhere, but they don't see it. They start to relax a little, and then the monster attacks.

The only difference with that and Constance's current situation was that she knew what was going on.

Her ears caught a sudden faint sound somewhere behind her, possibly near the far wall. It was a mechanical whirring sound slightly different from the whirring of the Helicarrier's rotors. It was a tiny sound, almost delicate, like the barely audible beating of a hummingbird's wings.

She was just about to turn around and investigate the noise when the bang of a gun being shot could be heard. Acting on impulse, Constance stretched her arms up parallel with her shoulders, the palms of her hands facing outward. A sudden, bright burst of energy bathed the room in blinding pink and surrounded Constance in a bubble-like dome. The surface of the dome rippled as something came into contact with it, followed by a strange warbling sound, similar to that of a large rubber ball bouncing off of a hard surface. Constance turned around and was just narrowly managed to catch the sight of the red hot laser beam as it reflected off of her shield and shot towards the wall.

More gunshots followed, trailed by more laser beams zipping towards her at the fastest of speeds, this time in all different directions. She did not move a muscle, simply because like the first laser, the others bounced harmlessly off her shield and impacted the walls a great distance away.

A buzzer sounded from somewhere up above, an annoyingly loud sound that wanted to make you grind your teeth, much akin to someone dragging their nails on a chalkboard. When it ended, panels on the walls opened, revealing other panels that slip forward to take their place. These panels had white targets painted in their centers, and they almost glared at her as they sat motionless, almost taunting her.

Another buzzer sounded, as annoying as the first, and a few of the targets began moving. Some shifted to adjacent walls, others went up to the ceiling, and the rest just sat there, waiting for her to make a move. So she did.

Constance flicked her wrists out, palms facing the ceiling. Small dodgeball sized orbs of pink ignited in her hands, pulsing with electricity. Her eyes had become enveloped in the same glowing color, staring hard at the moving and stationary targets.

Then she sprung.

Twisting her body, she took aim at a stationary target. She pushed with her mind, imagining the energy sphere in her grasp shooting from her palm to hit the target. It mimicked her thoughts and hit just shy of the center. At the same time, she aimed for another target off to her right and fired away, just barely nicking the edge.

Her body moved with incredible grace as she performed a few back-flips (ones that caused her back to ache. She hadn't moved as such in a while), a few spins, and a few sharp turns, all the while shooting off the glowing projectiles she produced from her hands. Finally, after what seemed like hours of aiming, firing, and performing acrobatic stunts, the irritating buzzer sounded once more, and the targets, all sporting either a large black burn in the center or a slightly charred scar near the edge, disappeared and folded back into the walls from which they came. This was followed by a disembodied voice echoing from the ceiling.

"_At ease, Miss Grisham."_

Constance righted herself, standing up straight and panting heavily as the room was suddenly bathed in bright light. The lights turning on gave her a good view of the room surrounding her. The walls were decorated in irregular black smudges, each marking the place where one of her energy orbs had hit. Much smaller bruises suggested where the lasers had been redirected to. To put it plainly, the place was a mess.

A door on the wall off to her right creaked open, revealing Director Fury and Agent Coulson as they made their way over to her tired form. Katia was situated in Coulson's arms, who had offered to watch her while she performed, much to Fury's annoyance. Currently, she was squirming, wanting to be out of his hold and back into her mommy's embrace.

"Interesting demonstration, Miss Grisham." Fury commented, looking as if he was fighting to not cast irritated looks at the fussy baby in his third-in-command's arms. Constance moved forward and took Katia from Coulson's arms, murmuring a grateful 'thank you' to him before pulling away.

He nodded his reply.

"Where did you learn to move like that, if I may ask?" Fury continued.

Constance shifted Katia in her arms so she and the baby could be comfortable. "After I became a lone vigilante, I thought it was a good idea to learn that stuff." She shrugged, still panting.

Fury shook his head in understanding, staring at her with a stern expression. "You're going to need to work more on your aim, though. I suggest you come to the Training facility every other day to work on it."

Constance restrained herself from groaning out loud. She thought she wasn't supposed to be doing anything until they found the Tesseract, and Loki subsequently. She didn't want to go to a gym and sweat her butt off. But then she thought about it for a minute. She wanted to be the best she could be when confronting this man, and just using what she knows now would probably not work to her advantage.

So she nodded reluctantly, wiping a sweaty hand on the pair of sweat pants that she changed into for the demonstration. "What now?" she asked.

Coulson decided to step in at this point. "Dinner should be starting here soon, if you want to head to the Mess Hall." He said. Constance brightened at this suggestion. This meant she could talk to Dr. Banner more, and maybe start a conversation with Steve if he decided to join them.

"I'll do that, than you." She said to the third-in-command, smiling as she walked towards the door.

* * *

Later, Constance sat by herself at a table in the Helicarrier's cafeteria, watching Katia pick up the little bits of watermelon from her high chair tray and stuff them into her mouth, making the juice dribble down her chin. The school teacher smiled as she took a small bite of the lasagna on her plate. Her baby was just so cute no matter what she did.

Constance washed down the bite of lasagna with a sip of ice tea, trying to drown out its taste. It was good lasagna, but there just seemed something off about it, and she couldn't for the life of her figure out what it was. _Oh well_, she thought with a mental shrug. _Maybe it's just an acquired S.H.I.E.L.D. taste._

She turned back to her food, starting in on her salad smothered in Italian dressing and looking around at the other tables. The S.H.I.E.L.D. workers were all bunched in groups, talking to each other and laughing, acting like they were completely different from the serious people she had seen earlier. It was understandable; working at S.H.I.E.L.D. was a serious job.

She was starting to feel a little lonely, however. There was no sign of Dr. Banner, Steve, or even Natasha anywhere. She was sitting at a table all by herself, with no one to talk to except her daughter. But Katia was too young and didn't know how to talk, let alone banter. She wanted to hold a pleasant dinner conversation with someone who would actually answer.

As if someone had heard her thoughts, she heard footsteps approaching her table. She looked up from her salad to see Dr. Banner coming towards her with his food tray, that adorable shy smile playing at his lips again. Her mouth split into a wide grin.

"Hello again, Dr. Banner." She said when he reached the table.

"Hello," he replied back, glancing fleetingly at the chair next to hers at the adjacent edge of the table. "Uh, is this seat taken?"

"No, go ahead." She said. He pulled back the chair and sat down, picking up his fork to start eating. "Gotten anywhere in finding the Tesseract?"

The doctor shook his head as he chewed his lasagna. "Not yet." He said after he swallowed. "I'm almost done getting everything set up to register the spectrometers."

"That's good." She smiled kindly, turning away from the conversation briefly as Katia got the idea to bang her sippy cup against her tray. Constance took the cup away from her, making her squeal in frustrated protest, before giving it back to her and keeping a hand on it.

Dr. Banner watched her as she did this, finding his eyes drift to the energetic baby in the high chair. She looked a lot like her mother, with her strawberry-blonde hair, despite it being a darker shade, and the shape of her ears. The questions he wanted to ask the woman about her daughter began welling up in his mind, and he figured now was a good time to ask.

"She's a feisty little girl, isn't she?" he said with amusement while the baby let out one of the cutest giggles he had ever heard as she stared at Constance. The mother nodded, smiling lovingly down the infant.

"Yeah," she turned back to him with that same wide smile. He felt his heart flutter pleasantly again. She was actually quite pretty when she smiled. "She's my lively little princess."

The good doctor found himself returning her smile, remembering that she had said that earlier. "What's her name?" he asked as he pushed around the contents of his salad. She hadn't said it before when they had first encountered each other, and he'd been curious since.

"Katia." She responded, taking a bite of her own. "Katia Ranae Grisham."

"Pretty name." he mused. It was indeed a pretty name, and very unique.

"Thank you, Dr. Banner." She replied.

"Bruce."

"What?" Constance blinked, caught off guard.

"Call me Bruce." He smiled at her bewilderment. He figured she might be starting to get tired of calling him 'Dr. Banner' all the time. "It's not as much of a mouthful."

Her stunned and confused look immediately dissolved into a grin that mirrored his own. "Alright then, Bruce." She agreed.

* * *

**And that's the end of Chapter 5!**

**Writing the scene with the Hulk was fun. I love writing his halting speech (even though he only said like 3 sentences XD).**

**I might be updating my Ghostbusters story soon. I'm not sure when, but soon. And I'm also trying to develop ideas for an Independence Day story (DavidxOC. Because Jeff Goldblum played a computer geek...who is incredibly sexy. Yummy.)**

**And some of you know how I used to have a Hunger Games fanfic on here with only 1 chapter, but I took it down...well, I'm thinking about re-posting it, mostly because I've been reading KatnissxPeeta post-Mockingjay fanfics and I want to write about my Tribute sooooo badly, especially cause Catching Fire is coming out this year (at least I think) :D**

**Chapter 6 may be a filler (which means more bonding BrucexConstance fluff) or a small timeskip to when Loki is found in Stuttgart (which means some actoin, Tony, Loki, Thor, and still more bonding BrucexConstance fluff) I'm not sure yet. What do you think? I'm kinda leaning towards a filler, because I want to establish that they were on the Helicarrier for more than two days, and maybe throw in some more character development for Constance. But then again I really want to add Tony and Thor too *grumbles***

**Reviews will be gratefully appreciated! I want to know you're glorious opinions! Constructive criticism would be nice and welcome (but just PLEASE BE NICE ABOUT IT!) And please don't waste my time with flames.**

**See you all next time!**

**~H.E.T.**


	6. Chapter 6: Dreams of the Past

**Hello everyone :D It's update time again! YAAY!**

**Oyy this took me FOREVER to write! I had about a third of it typed out before I decided to rewrite it, and then this all happened. The original I decided shall be the content for Chapter 7, so look forward to that :)**

**So I should let you all know about a particular misadventure that happened a few weeks ago. I had gone to OhayoCon 2013 with some friends, and the whole day we were there, I could swear we were being followed by these two guys that were cosplaying as Thor and Loki XD it was hysterical! I kept pointing them out too XD I was lyke "Hey guys, look, it's Thor and Loki again!"**

**Oh yeah and also at OhayoCon, I got the chance to meet Richard Horvitz and Rikki Simons :D For those who don't know, Richard voices Zim from Invader Zim, and Rikki voices his idiot robot, Gir. I got their autographs too :3 They were so nice! And I went to their Invader Zim panel and just about died from laughter. They are so hysterical and random!**

**Oh yeah and in the past few weeks, my soul is slowly being devoured by this little video game series called Mass Effect. It...is...AWESOME! My friend Becca got me hooked on it (and she also mentioned that my heart will slowly get broken by it). She was right too (even though im still only on the 1st game). But guess what, my stupid XBOX got the open tray error so I had to send it in to get repaired *cries*. It wont be back for about another week or so :(**

**ANYWAYS!**

**So in this chapter you get a little inside look of Constance's past. It's only a small fragment, yes, but more will show up in later chapters :) and of course there is some adorable mommy/daughter cuteness in here, as well as some BrucexConstance fluff.**

**And now, onto some reviews!**

**AikoRose: Haha you are evil XD I'm glad you like this story so much! It tickles me to the bone to see you guys like it and review it :) For your inquiry about Constance's uniform, yes, you will get to 'see' it. Matter of fact, if you check out the cover pic for the fic, she is wearing it :) (cause I drew the pic :D) It won't be featured until Stuttgart, however. So look forward to that!**

**Stargazer1364: Sorry, but I actually want to delve into a little bit of Constance's character (mostly her past) before we get to that :/ but It won't take long, I promise! And pleased to meet you too! :)**

**Miko Hayashi: . Maybe it is, maybe it isn't :/ ya never know! Although I will say this: Tony is NOT Katia's dad. You'll find out who it is eventually ;) **

**DontCountMeOut:**** Maybe it is . and I'm thinking there will be Steve/Constance friendship :) it would be awesome!**

**So without further ado, commence Chapter 6!**

**Disclaimer: I do not own the Avengers. This amazingly awesome movie belongs to MARVEL. I only own Constance and Katia.**

**Enjoy guys!**

* * *

_Constance shuffled her feet through the covering of leaves that concealed the sparse grass and huffed tiredly to herself. Her gripped tightened on the strap of her book bag, the heavy weights of her textbooks shifting around on her back as she trudged through the slowly fading sunlight that was filtering through the woods, calling out her dog's name._

_She had just arrived home on the bus after a long day of classes, looking forward to just laying down her bed with her feet propped up and relax. Unfortunately, as soon as she walked in the front door, her mother had informed her that her golden retriever, Echo, had just run off._

"_I take my eyes off of that dog of yours for one second and he's gone. Dug a hole right under the fence." Her mother had ranted, standing there in front of the sink where she had been washing dishes, her hands on her hips even though they were wet and soapy. The sixteen-year-old walked towards the back door of the house, disregarding the fact that her book bag was still slung over her shoulders as she pretended to listen to her mother going on and on to her retreating back. "You are going to teach him more discipline from now on, young lady."_

_Just like Mom to point out the flaw and command that I do better, Constance rolled her eyes and pushed a strand of strawberry blonde hair out of her face. Lucy Grisham had instilled, insisted, and vowed that from birth, Constance Isabella Grisham would be perfect in every way, shape, and form. There would be no room for error of any kind, she had always said._

_But she just didn't get it. She didn't understand that no human being is perfect, and it was pointless to try to tell her otherwise. She just wouldn't listen. Her dad had even given up trying to convince her. "Your ma is a stubborn one, she is." He would always say in that big, booming Irish accent of his. "She won't hear another word against her opinion. She's just always been that way."_

"_But most people would get tired of it after a while, wouldn't they, Dad?" she would always ask on particular days when she and her mother had quarreled._

"_Aye, some do." He would nod, scratching the red stubble on his chin in thought as he leaned back in his favorite armchair. "But some don't. I sure haven't."_

"_How have you managed to stay even after she dismisses your thoughts on her views?" she would ask next, shuffling her stocking feet against the living room carpet._

"_Because I love your ma, Connie. I love her more than anythin' in the world." He would always reply, that almost lovesick look beginning to shine in his gray eyes whenever he spoke of his love for her. He would then turn his eyes on her and begin to play with her hair with one of his large and calloused hands, gazing up at her with fatherly adoration. "And she loves you, Connie. Honest to God, she does. You two just don't always see eye to eye like you used to."_

_He could never be more right in that assumption, she thought as she tromped through the leaves to find her dog. Her final thought in that regard was that if she had a daughter later in life, she would definitely not treat her in the way she herself was treated by her own mother._

_Constance sighed again, breathing in the calming scent of the crisp, autumn air and tugged her jacket closer to her as a breeze blew through the trees and tossed her upper-back-length hair. She needed to find Echo as soon as possible; it was getting colder outside, and she was pretty sure it was getting close to suppertime. _

"_Echo!" she called out into the wooded area, hearing her voice reverberate away from her position and hoping that her lovable golden retriever could hear it. Apparently he didn't, because he didn't show up. _

_She whistled loudly and tried again. "Echo!" she shouted, clapping her hands noisily in the hopes he would hear her this time. "Come!"_

_Still, he did not reveal himself. Constance was now beginning to grow worried for the big furball of affection that she loved so dearly. He usually always came when she called. Why wasn't he responding?_

_A horrible thought struck her just then, and worry and fear stung at her heart. What if he was trapped somewhere and had no way to come to her? What if he was hurt and was unable to run or walk? What if-_

_No, she thought with a shake of her head. You're assuming the worst, Constance. He's probably fine. He just didn't hear you._

_Reassured only slightly with that thought, Constance ventured deeper into the woods, calling out her dog's name again and again in the hopes to be heard. But still, no large, fluffy golden retriever had shown up._

_It was just when she was beginning to worry if he was hurt again when she felt the hairs on the back of her neck stand on end, and she heard rustling in the leaves behind her. It was as if someone was there, trailing her as if she were prey and they the predator, like a cat stalking a mouse. She whipped her head around to see if she could see anyone, hoping in the deepest pit of her soul that there was no one there. There wasn't. _

_Still, the feeling of being followed remained. She turned her head slowly around to see if she could catch a glimpse of whoever might be there, in case they only came out when her back was turned. Still, she saw no one. _

_Breathing a sigh of relief, she laughed to herself. "You're just being paranoid, Constance." She muttered quietly, shaking her head as she walked on. "Everything's fine."_

_Suddenly, as she was about to call for her dog once more, something grabbed her by the arms from behind, and a large hand clamped itself over her mouth, preventing her from yelling out. She stuck her tongue out, licking the hand and causing it's owner to yelp in disgust. The person, male from shat she could tell, pulled his hand away to wipe her spit off his palm, which prompted her to begin screaming in alarm._

"_HELP!" She shouted. "SOMEONE PLEASE HELP ME!"_

_The hand came back to clamp itself over her mouth, but this time it had a rag laid gently in its palm. She knew what this was from the movies. It was a rag soaked in chloroform, and it would make her pass out if it got near her face. She had to act fast._

_So she began struggling, trying to wiggle out of her assailant's grasp, flailing her legs to try to land a kick on him. But it was all in vain; his grip was too tight. The rag clamped over her mouth and nose and she took in its scent, feeling herself losing consciousness fast._

_The last thing she heard before losing herself to the darkness was her assailant speaking to an unseen companion. "The boss will be pleased. She's the perfect test subject."_

* * *

Constance gasped aloud and sat up, looking frantically around her for any signs of her attacker or his accomplice. She found nothing, only the darkness in her quarters aboard the S.H.I.E.L.D. Helicarrier. She breathed out a sigh, slumping over against her propped up knees and pinching the bridge of her nose. Cold sweat trickled down her forehead as she tried to calm her pounding heart.

It had all been a dream. No, a flashback. To the day she had been kidnapped.

Her brain began to process all that had happened. Why would she have a flashback of that now? She had thought she had gotten over it; she hadn't had that dream since she was eighteen. Apparently it still haunted her, just not to an extreme like it used to. Great, just great.

She looked to the alarm clock sitting on her nightstand. 1:26 AM it read. She sighed, knowing now that she probably wasn't going to be able to go back to sleep anytime soon.

That's when she noticed the small whimpering coming from the crib at the foot of her bed, where her baby was supposed to be sleeping soundly. Whatever was going on was definitely not sound sleeping. She immediately got up and went to investigate, wanting to see what was wrong with Katia. Her daughter was laying there fidgeting, her face scrunched up in fear, the little mewling noises escaping her to give away her distress. She was having a nightmare too.

Constance immediately began to act. She began stroking the baby's cheek softly, trying to soothe her daughter enough without waking her up. "Shhhh," she whispered, tucking her long hair behind her to get it out of the way before moving to rub at Katia's back. "Shhh, it's okay."

Unfortunately, Katia chose that time to wake with a start. Constance made a little surprised sound when the room turned from silent to loud as the baby began to cry. Acting fast, the teacher picked her daughter up and cuddled her close to her chest, whispering comforting things into her ear and rocking her back and forth, hoping to stop the hysterical wails. It almost broke her heart when Katia was like this.

"Shhhh," she murmured again gently, stroking the thin, dark strawberry-blonde hair on her baby's head. "It's okay, sweetie. Mommy's here."

Katia's cries softened, but they did not subside completely. Constance kept going with whispering reassuring words and rubbing the baby's back once more. "Shhh, mommy's here. Mommy's got you."

She was reminded of the weeks after she had brought Katia home from the hospital; the near-sleepless nights when the newborn would wake up crying and she would try to figure out what was wrong. The fits didn't last very long, but there were many of them, and Constance had still woken up tired.

This was different, though. She knew what was causing her daughter's distress this time, and it was her job as a mother to fix the problem.

Katia's crying by this time had softened down to the small whimper that it was before, and it was soft enough that it could barely be heard. She knew that the baby wouldn't be going back to sleep anytime soon, so she decided that they both needed some air.

"Come on, sweetie. Let's go take a walk." Constance said, reaching for Katia's blanket and teddy bear that she had deposited on her desk, able to see them because of the nightlight plugged into the socket by the television. She wrapped Katia lightly in the soft blanket and tucked the bear inside for her to hold before laying her down on the bed to pull her bathrobe on.

Stuffing her key card into her pocket, Constance picked the infant up again and padded out into the dimly lit hallway in her bare feet. She had no idea where they were going, but she knew it was somewhere far from their room, and far from the nightmares that troubled them.

Constance hadn't been paying attention to where she was going, so lost in thought about her flashback-nightmare and trying to figure out why it had re-appeared. She didn't realize she was unconsciously heading toward the D Level R&D lab until she found herself nearing the door. She didn't know why her feet brought her here; it was sure to be shut down for the night, and there was probably no one inside. It was really late after all.

To her surprise, the lights were still on inside, and the light above the door was still green, indicating that the room was still in use. Someone was still in there.

She peeked in at the edge of the window to see who would possibly be up at this time of night. When she eyed in on the lone person inside, she giggled quietly to herself.

Bruce was hunched over asleep on one of the long tables in front of a transparent computer screen, his arms folded in front of him and his head using them for a pillow. He must've dozed off while he was working, and no one had bothered to come and wake him up.

She hated to have to disturb his sleep; he had looked so tired earlier when they had met. He probably needed the sleep, what with all of the worry and stress he had in his system due to the other one inside him. Besides, he looked so peaceful, almost innocent in his slumber. It was rather cute.

The door slid open when it sensed her near it, surprisingly not stirring the snoozing doctor. She crept towards him with light steps, shifting Katia to one hand and reaching towards him with her other. The baby in her arms just looked on, oblivious as to what was going on.

Gently, Constance laid her hand on his back, applying enough pressure to lightly shake him to wake him up. "Bruce," she murmured, pushing on his back some more when he didn't move. She could feel each intake of breath with her hand, as well as feel the warmth of his skin through his purple shirt, and the surprising muscle that he possessed. He didn't look like much; short in stature and fidgety by nature. But his shoulders were broad, something that she liked in a guy. And the evidence of muscle made her feel like there was more to him than meets the eye. And she was right, of course, considering the creature that he turned into when pissed.

"Bruce, wake up." She tried again, shaking him only slightly harder this time. He stirred, and let out a tired, throaty, and deep moan as his eyes fluttered open. The sound she heard caught her off guard, and she felt her face growing warm. She couldn't think of a word to best describe what it sounded like to her other than sensual.

"Constance?" he straightened himself up and rubbed the sleep from his eyes, running a hand through his tousled curls. He looked around at all the computers that were still active, and the papers and files cluttered around him on the table. He took in her appearance; barefoot, cheeks rosy, and wearing a mint green bathrobe with loose hair, carrying her baby wrapped in a pink teddy bear blanket. They looked like they had just woken up. "What time is it?" he asked, momentarily forgetting that there was a watch on his wrist.

"A-Almost two in the morning." She replied, her blush fading. She pushed a strand of hair behind her ear and shifted Katia in her arms again, cocking her head to the side inquisitively. "How long have you been in here?"

For some unknown reason, Bruce felt his eyes look down at the table top, a sheepish, crooked smile making its way onto his lips. "I uhh…haven't left the room since dinner." He admitted. "I want to get everything fully functional before tomorrow."

Constance was stunned once more. He'd been in here since after dinner? That was almost eight hours ago! "I thought you said you were almost done." She said with a confused smile.

"I am." He told her, beginning to fidget with his hands, still not looking up at her. He gestured to the transparent screen he had supposedly been working on before he nodded off. "It's just that this particular process takes a while. I have to do it manually."

Constance sighed and shook her head, reaching over and beginning to close the open files that lay strewn across the work surface, stacking the folders on top of each other to neaten the place up a little bit.

"Going to bed is what you_ have_ to do, Mr. Banner." She pretended to scold him, her own crooked smile and a raised eyebrow on display. She found his glasses sitting on top of a folder and picked them up, folding the stems in before handing them to him. "I don't want you to get yelled at by Fury because you stayed up too late and are too tired to function in the morning."

He chuckled. "That would be…interesting to watch." His small smile slowly dropped when he really got a chance to think about it. When he didn't have much sleep, he got cranky. And sometimes when he was cranky enough, the Other Guy would come out. Coupled with one annoyed S.H.I.E.L.D. Director reprimanding him for napping on the job, he could see it would not be a pretty sight. "But uh…I think the…Other Guy would have something to say about that."

It dawned on Constance what he was talking about: The green rage monster within him. It probably wouldn't take too kindly to Fury yelling at him.

"You're right." She nodded, watching him stand up and proceed around the room, shutting off monitor by monitor one by one. She followed him to keep the conversation going, her smile finding its way back to her face. "Well, all the more reason for you to go to bed. Just so we can prevent _that_ fiasco from happening."

He gave her a half-hearted smile at that, pulling himself from the rather dark and depressing turn his thoughts went down. He eyed her once more before putting on an amused smirk. "Speaking of which, Miss Grisham." He retorted playfully. "What are you and Katia doing up so early in the morning?"

Constance's smile dropped a bit, wondering if she should tell him about her flashback. She didn't want to stress him out further than he already was because of S.H.I.E.L.D. pulling him into this Tesseract business. But then again, maybe talking about it will help her clear her mind.

_Nahh,_ she thought. _Best not to mention it right now._

"I umm…I had a nightmare. We both did." She answered honestly, biting her lip as she stroked Katia's hair. The baby's eyes were beginning to droop with fatigue, and her mother knew it wouldn't be long before she was out like a light.

"Oh," Bruce murmured as they reached the door.

"Yeah…" she replied back just as quietly.

"Can I ask what it was about?" he flipped the switch for the overhead lights to turn them off, which automatically made the light above the door turn red, signaling that the facility was closed. Constance gently played with a thin strand of her daughter's hair, watching her softly as the baby's head drooped to rest on her shoulder.

"I…I'd rather not talk about it right now." She murmured. She wasn't ready to delve into it just yet. She wanted to tell him, seeing as how he was affected by Gamma radiation too. It would just take time. Besides, she really didn't even know the guy yet. She wanted to get to know him more before she spilled anything on her past.

Bruce understood. It was obvious that it was a touchy subject, whatever it was.

"Okay." He said, twiddling his thumbs in front of him as they walked down the hallways towards the elevator. "I was just curious. You don't have to tell me if you don't want to."

She gave him a grateful smile. "Thanks Bruce." She said.

* * *

**And that's a wrap!**

**Since the 7th chapter is about one third done already, you can expect a fast update :)**

**Reviews would be amazing and very lovely to get. Constructive criticism would be fine too (just PLEASE BE NICE ABOUT IT) and don't waste my time with flames. I don't have much patience to deal with the likes of those.**

**See ya!**

**~H.E.T.**


	7. Chapter 7: Blind Spot

**Hey guys! It's update time once again!**

**So this chapter has a bit of awkwardness and a bit of fluff, as well as a bit more info on Constance (not much, I'll admit, but still). And there is some Constance/Steve friendship in here, which is awesome :)**

**And now, onto some reviews!**

**Miko Hayashi: YOU'LL JUST HAVE TO WAIT TO FIND OUT! ;)**

**Stargazer1364: Thanks :) And really? Wow, that would be really bad :/ Sorry if I somehow made you paranoid.**

**Vampirerex1: Aww thanks :) I'm glad you like it! I don't know, we'll have to see. And I'm glad you like Katia, She is very adorable :)**

**And I would just like to say a gigantic THANK YOU to all the people who are following and have favorite this story! and 3,007 views! Wow! Thank you guys all so much! You have no idea how happy this makes me! Thank you, thank you, thank you so much for all of you're support!**

**Disclaimer: I do not own the Avengers. This amazingly awesome movie belongs to MARVEL. I only own Constance and Katia.**

**Enjoy guys!**

* * *

Constance launched herself over a hurdle, barely avoiding grazing her stomach on the top edge as she stretched her arms out in front of her, preparing to lessen her impact with the mat bolted to the floor. Shifting her weight onto her hands the minute she landed, she pushed ever so slightly so she would hit the mat with her upper back, subsequently completing a full frontal roll before jumping to her feet and letting loose another energy sphere at a moving target. She could feel the sweat trickling down her forehead as she broke into a run, shooting off another orb as she darted forward and began to maneuver swiftly around pillars covered in mats. She weaved in and out of the cushioned maze, firing energy orb after energy orb at ever target she spotted, occasionally throwing a force field up when a laser came whizzing towards her.

Fury had said the day before in a private meeting that she had to be prepared for anything, so he made her run this near-never-ending obstacle course. It was located on Level E in a very large room, and was normally used by the specialty agents, aka Natasha and Agent Barton. She had been at this for about an hour, and she could feel the strain it was putting on her muscles, and how it was draining her powers from her body. She could feel herself slowly becoming weaker, and her breathing became more labored. But she knew she had to prepare and train if she was ever going to fight Loki. If she wanted her daughter to be safe, then as her mother, Constance would do whatever it took to keep her that way.

She reached the end of the pillar forest, and she darted across a stretch of bare mat to reach the next set of equipment in the course. Lasers fired from the sides, bouncing harmlessly against her force field at the same time as energy orb after energy orb was created by breaking off from the force-field and fired at the targets bolted to the walls. When she reached the edge of the mat, she let the force-field drop and turned to the side to observe her work so far, catching her breath while she was at it.

Bad mistake. Suddenly, she felt pain explode across her back; searing, burning pain that made her cry out and fall to her hands and knees, her face screwed up in agony and air hissing in through her teeth.

The annoying buzzer sounded from overhead, and the lights flickered on to bathe the room in bright lights. She barely noticed. She was still in pain, and that was warring with the fact that she was stunned. That had never happened before now.

A calming, level voice came over the sound system. "Are you okay, Miss Grisham?" the voice of Phil Coulson asked. She could just picture him standing in the control room for the course, watching her tense in pain through the one-way window.

All Constance could do was make a whimpering noise and shake her head, gasping when the movement stretched one of the laser impact points on her back. Damn, those things hurt!

"Alright." Coulson said soothingly. She had found out just yesterday that the S.H.I.E.L.D. agent had a gentler side to him, something that Director Fury and Agent Hill and even Natasha sorely lacked. At least to her eyes anyway. "Just sit tight. I'm sending Dr. Banner in to help you."

Constance almost breathed a sigh of relief at hearing that. Bruce could help relieve the pain in her back. Having him look at her was better than having someone she didn't know look at her. She had only known the scientist for about a standard work week now, and they only shared small conversations at meal times and her occasional trip to the R&D Lab on Level D, as she didn't want to distract him from finding the Tesseract. In that time, she began thinking that he was, like Coulson, a gentle person. It was kind of ironic when he had that great big hulking monster inside of him somewhere, but she thought his attentions were tender. Her observances came from a few times when he had come into contact with Katia, such as prying her little fingers from something on his person, be it his shirt or his hair, or poking her gently in the nose to make her giggle. He never lost patience with her, and Constance liked him all the more because of it. She hoped he would be gentle with the wounds she had acquired just like he was gentle with her daughter.

The sound of a door banging open broke her from her thoughts, followed by the sound of hurrying footsteps. She could only assume it was Bruce coming to help her, for she knew if she moved it would only cause her more pain.

When the footsteps reached her, they stopped, and the sound of clothing sliding against skin made her believe that Bruce was crouching down to her level. "Connie, you okay?" came his heavenly-sounding voice. Thank God he was here to help.

"No." she hissed in a whimper, clenching her eyes shut to combat the stinging feeling on her back that just wouldn't go away. She turned her head slowly and carefully, enough so that she could look at him with one eye through the loose strands of her clipped up hair. "How bad is it?"

She watched as his eyes traveled over the expanse of her back, seeing his face visibly tense and cringe, and knowing then that it didn't look pretty. His chocolatey-brown-eyed gaze found hers, and his face took on a weak smile, his eyebrows knitted together awkwardly.

"Doesn't look too bad…" he said, scratching the stubble on his chin uncertainly. The way his voice rose one octave told her he wasn't completely being honest. Probably didn't want to cause her any alarm. She had to admit that he was sweet. "You have a few burns on your back."

Constance had the strength to roll her eyes. "I wasn't born yesterday, Bruce. Just tell me what the damage is." she let out a strained sigh.

Bruce avoided her request, instead saying, in an even higher octave than before, "Let's get you to the medbay and get you patched up first, alright?"

She was about to argue; she didn't want to wait any longer to know how bad her injuries were, and she wanted to get back to Katia as soon as possible. But then she caught a familiar glimpse of green seeping into his eyes, as well as the trembling in his skin, and she immediately kept her mouth shut.

Uh oh.

Bruce could feel the Other Guy growling in his hiding place as he stared at the burns on her back. The rage monster wanted to be let out while he glared at the scalds, to show what caused them that they should not harm this woman. He did not like it when a friend was hurt.

In the past week, the Other Guy had listened to Banner and Constance interact with each other, watching her through Banner's eyes and trying to determine if she was friend or foe. He already knew that the tiny human she always carried with her was friend, because even he knew what a baby was, and he knew babies were not a threat. And just recently, he had finally decided that Constance was friend too. And a very _pretty_ friend at that.

"Alright Bruce." The good doctor heard from her at last, and he let out the breath he hadn't realized he had been holding. He then proceeded to try to calm the Other Guy down.

'_I'm going to look at her burns,'_ he told the presence in the back of his mind levelly, suddenly not really knowing where the calmness he felt was coming from. _'I'll bandage them up and put burn cream on them. She'll feel better after that.'_

'_Hulk know Banner will help._' the Other Guy scoffed. The doctor thought then that if the beast had a separate body, the green guy would be crossing his big beefy arms over his broad chest in irritation, and possibly even rolling his eyes. _'Hulk smash guns that cause burns. No more hurt.'_

'_I can't help her if you come out._' Bruce reasoned coolly, still amazed that his mental voice wasn't stuttering or in a higher octave, because he was sure panicking deep down. The rage monster paused before he could retort back, thinking it over. Some people thought that, because of his halting speech pattern, the Other Guy was very dim witted. He was actually far from it. Bruce guessed it helped sharing a body and mind with someone smart.

Finally, the Other Guy huffed in annoyance and settled back down. _'Fine,' _it growled. _'Banner stay and help Constance.'_

Bruce sighed in relief, feeling the small spasms that were shaking his body begin to recede. Once again, he had avoided another incident with the monster within. But for how much longer would he be able to continue evading them?

He turned to look back down at Constance, averting his eyes from her wounds and just focusing on her face. "Can you stand up?" he asked her when his voice returned to normal.

The woman winced. "It hurts to move." She hissed, letting her head fall limp and almost hit the floor, her eyes dropping from his to the dull gray color of the metal beneath her. She knew that once she got up, her movements wouldn't hurt as much. But how in the world was she going to get up when every move she made pulled at the burns and caused her more pain?

"Do you want me to get more help?" he asked. Constance nodded as best as she could without hesitation.

"Would you like me to send Captain Rogers in, Doctor?" came Coulson's voice over the intercom. Ah, so the man hadn't left yet. Well, Bruce supposed that was a good thing.

"If you would, please." Bruce nodded, agreeing that Steve would be the best choice in assisting him. They were all supposed to be "teammates" after all.

It wasn't long before Steve came jogging into the room, looking worried at seeing the poor woman hunched over on the ground in pain. "How can I help, Doc?" he asked.

"She says it hurts for her to move. I'm guessing that the burns stretch if she tries to shift any part of her upper body." Bruce explained, waving him over to Constance's side opposite of him. "If you can grab her arm, we can pull her up without making her move her shoulders or arms."

Steve crouched down to the good doctor's level and peered down at Constance, his bright blue eyes straying to the wounds on her back. He fought the urge to shake his head. So much had changed since the 40s.

Constance said nothing, but she was starting to get a little anxious. When were they going to help her up already?

The answer came in the form of something warm and firm grasping gently around her bicep. She pulled her gray eyes back up to him, and she found that the something was his large, warm hands gripping her arm, his long fingers wrapping almost completely around her bicep, looking to pull her upright. The discovery made her face grow warm for some reason, unusual because it had never happened before around him. Or so she could recall.

Even more peculiar was when Steve grabbed her other bicep in a similar manner. The sensation didn't feel as pleasing as it did when Bruce was the one who caused it. Strange.

"Okay, here we go." He said softly, tugging gently on her arm in order to get her halfway up, and having Steve do the same. She hissed when a few of the numerous burns were pulled as she moved her arms, but otherwise let Bruce and Steve pull her up to her feet. Her shoulders were still tensed when they let go, but otherwise, she was mostly okay.

All the way there, Constance kept stealing glances at Bruce. He was thinking about something; she could tell because he was chewing on the right side of his lower lip absentmindedly. She had seen him do it a lot from her time in the lab with him. She would let her eyes wander to him for a few seconds, and she would see him biting on his lip as he labored over finding the Tesseract. It was an interesting quirk, and she couldn't help but think that it was, like pretty much everything about him, irresistibly cute.

A little while later, Bruce and Steve led a still-stiff-as-a-board Constance into the medbay. The S.H.I.E.L.D. agent in charge at first tried to ask-without looking up from her computer-if they had permission from the Director to be in the facility. Bruce immediately stepped in and described Constance's injuries, making the woman look up to assess the damages. When she saw that it was Dr. Banner who was talking to her, she immediately found them a room as fast as possible (there were a few agents still recovering from the base collapse, she had explained nervously, casting almost fearful glances at Bruce.)

The woman had all but fled the room after Bruce asked to be the one to treat Constance's wounds. This had made Constance frown considerably, almost completely ignoring the stinging in her back. She didn't like it that that woman, or people more accurately, walked on eggshells around Bruce. She didn't like that they were afraid to even be in the same room as him for fear of pissing him off. They didn't see the kind, intelligent man that she and Steve saw. All they saw was the green creature that shared his body. The Other Guy.

_Admit that you were glad she was scared,_ a voice in her head whispered to her. _You don't want her oogling at him instead, do you?_

Constance blinked, stunned at the presence of the voice. _N-No, _She answered in confusion. _No one should be scared of him. He hasn't done anything to them to warrant their being scared._

_No, but she could have spontaneously became attracted to him._

_What does that have to do with anything? _She wondered.

_I've seen the way you steal glances at him when you know he's not looking, _the voice purred._ You think he's cute._

_So what if I do? _She scoffed back. _It's not a crime to think someone is attractive._

She could almost hear the voice rolling it's eyes. _But it's more than that for you, stupid. You're starting to crush on him._

Constance didn't know what to say on the matter, so she turned her attention back onto Bruce and Steve, who both had her sit down on the examination table. She did so carefully, mindful not to stretch her burns anymore, as they still hurt quite a bit.

"You need help with anything else, Doctor?" Steve asked Bruce, who began rummaging around in the cabinets to try to find some burn cream and bandages. When he located both items, he gave Steve another one of his adorable hesitant smiles and shook his head.

"No, I think we're all set here." He said, moving to Constance while unscrewing the lid off the cream. "You're free to go, Steve."

Steve turned, walked towards the door, and paused halfway through. Bruce and Constance stared at him in question, wondering what he was doing. He then turned around and seated himself in the chair near to the door. "I think I'll stick around." He said with a smile and a shrug. "Not like I have anything better to do anyway."

Constance gave him a small smile, feeling glad for the company of these two men.

"Uh…okay, Constance." Bruce walked around to face her front, fidgeting with his hands again. She looked up at his face, and suddenly noticed the blush that was dusting his cheeks and the tips of his ears, and the way he ducked his head bashfully and looked down at his shoes. He wondered how she couldn't possibly hear his heart beginning to pound oddly in his chest. God, what was wrong with him? "I-I'm going to have to um…remove your shirt in order t-to bandage you up properly. S-So…"

Constance blinked in stunned silence, glancing over at Steve to find that he had heard what Bruce had said. The poor guy's face was beet red, and he had averted his eyes from her. She blushed along with them, suddenly feeling almost naked before them without her shirt even being off.

"Uhh…o-okay." She stumbled. "Could someone get me another shirt, then?"

"I-I'll do it, Connie." Stammered Steve. He stood up from his chair and turned towards the door once more. She stopped him before he completely disappeared.

"Could you check on Katia for me while you're there?" she asked as she handed him her key card and told him where a particularly comfortable shirt was located in her luggage. "And if it's not too much trouble, could you bring her to me if she's awake?"

"Sure, I can do that." He nodded, his blush fading and relief coursing through him.

"Thanks, Steve." She smiled. He smiled back firefly before walking out the door.

Bruce chose that moment to speak, finally being successful at fighting his blush down and calming his quickly beating heart. Lucky thing the Other Guy knew it wasn't time for him to make an appearance. "I-I'm going to have to cut it off of you. It doesn't look like I can save your shirt…"

"I-It's fine, Bruce." She said quietly. "I didn't think it could be saved anyway. You know, 'cause of the burns…"

"Right." He nodded as he slipped his hand into his pants pocket and pulled out a pocket knife. Why S.H.I.E.L.D. let him keep it on him was beyond his knowledge, but he guessed it probably had something to do with the Other Guy. _It _always _has to do with the Other Guy_, he thought bitterly. He was glad they did, though. It was handy in times like this.

He flipped the blade out and, careful not to touch her burns, he picked up the slightly charred fabric surrounding them in his fingers. Slipping the knife under the navy blue fabric, he began to cut the shirt apart. Bit by bit, her bare back was becoming exposed to him, and he could see that her face wasn't the only place her freckles inhabited. They decorated her shoulders as well. He could even see a dark patch of skin that was shaped like a cloud; a birthmark. Catching himself, he looked back down at his work and examined the wounds she had attained. Small, angry blisters were already beginning to form on her skin, and the areas around the burns were deep, sunburnt red.

"How bad is it?" she asked him again when he didn't say anything.

Bruce picked up the container of burn cream he had set aside and dipped two of his fingers in the slimy substance. "It probably would be advised that you sleep on your stomach for a few days." He told her. He gently pressed his fingers to the burn highest on her back, feeling the heat radiating off of it from the laser blasts. "And it might be best of you come get me before you go to bed so I can put more cream on your back."

Constance hissed in pain when something poked one of her burns, but instantly let out a sigh of relief at the feeling of the cold cream against the heat of the wound. That sensation, coupled with the feeling of his gentle and calloused touch rubbing against her skin, was enough to make her blush all over again. The thought crossed her mind that anyone that were to walk in on them would think the spectacle quite scandalous.

She suddenly blinked and shook her head. Where were these thoughts coming from? This wasn't like her to get so worked up over a guy. Especially one she had only known for about a week.

_Doesn't matter_, the voice in her head whispered teasingly. _You liiike him._

_I do not!_ She shot back.

_Uh huh_, the voice retorted. _Keep telling yourself that._

Constance mentally grumbled and pulled away from the argument. There was no point in arguing with a voice inside her head. It would just make her seem crazy.

Her mind drifted back onto the burns that Bruce was gently treating with the burn cream. Why had she gotten them? Sure, her back had been turned, but usually that wasn't a problem. She had a sort of "sixth sense" that allowed her to feel when something harmful was hurtling towards her, which then allowed her to shoot up a force field to protect herself. But this time the sense didn't kick in, and she was caught off guard.

She wondered if Bruce might know what it was. "I don't understand how this happened." She voiced. She explained about her extra sensory power and how it was odd that she didn't feel it. He was silent for a while as he continued to soothe her back.

"Is there something wrong with it, do you think?" she wondered worriedly, turning her head so she could see him.

He pulled his lip out from in between his teeth. "I'm not sure." He finally admitted, making her sigh fearfully. "I have a theory, though. Maybe you stumbled upon a blind spot in this sensory power. A 'chink in the armor' as it were."

"But these burns are all over my back. I've been able to protect my back before!" she squeaked, terribly confused."

"Well, I think that's just it. There is a certain spot on your back that's a blind spot, and the lasers fired directly at that blind spot, but there was more than one round, so you got hit multiple times in different areas."

"Where do you think this spot is?" she wondered. She wanted to know so she can better protect herself in the future. So she wouldn't make this mistake again.

He finished up with the burn cream and wiped his fingers on a tissue. "Judging by the ranging intensity of the blistering and the angle your back was turned from the gun," he began as he reached for the roll of bandages and proceeded to unravel it carefully. "I think it's right on your spine. Maybe it even runs the entire length."

Constance didn't say anything. She was getting lost in thought as Bruce softly instructed her to lift her arms up as best as she could. She did so, stopping when she winced, and relaxed herself as the good doctor began gently wrapping the bandages around her torso. When he got too close, when his breath skimmed across her bare skin and made her blush in surprise, he muttered a sorry and kept working.

Silence accompanied them until Bruce tied off her bandages.

"There. That should work until later." He smiled and walked around her.

She smiled and pushed a strand of hair behind her ear. "Thanks, Bruce."

The sound of approaching footsteps made Bruce and Constance turn towards the door. Steve walked into the room averting his eyes from Constance, but had a gray t-shirt draped over one arm, her keycard in one hand, and holding Katia close to his chest. The baby was sucking on her pacifier, looking around her in curiosity and clutching Steve's flannel shirt in her tiny little fists. He shifted around and gripped the t-shirt in his hand.

"Here, Constance." He cleared his throat as he handed her the shirt with reddening cheeks.

Constance smiled at him and took the t-shirt from his grasp, slowly beginning to pull it over her head. "Thanks, Steve." She said. "Did Katia behave?"

He looked at her when she finally had the shirt pulled down all the way (with Bruce's help, of course). He chuckled and stepped forward to place the baby into her mother's arms. "She did." He said. "But uh…I think she might need to be checked."

Constance laughed and shook her head. "Alright, you." She looked to her daughter, nuzzling her forehead affectionately. "Let's go get cleaned up."

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**AND KATIA STRIKES AGAIN! Poor Constance, can't catch a break XD**

**Okay so I'm super excited because guess what: STUTTGART, LOKI, TONY AND THOR ARE GONNA BE IN THE NEXT CHAPTER! OH YEAH!**

**Reviews would be greatly appreciated, constructive criticism would be welcome(but BE NICE ABOUT IT!), and I'm not gonna bother with flames. Seriously. Don't like, don't read.**

**Well, catch you on the flip side!**

**~H.E.T.**


	8. Chapter 8: You're Up

**HOLY SHIT YOU GUYS! IT'S FINALLY HERE! THE NEW CHAPTER! ERMEHGERD! :D :D :D**

**I'm so sorry I couldn't get this out sooner! I was having a really rough time writing it, mostly because, to put it plainly, I've been having a lot of doubts concerning this story. But a few of my friends (and by a few I mean like three), erased the doubts I had, so I'm back :D**

**So this chapter is a little more insight into Constance's past. I hope it's satisfactory. I know I still haven't explained a few things yet, but I'm gonna space the flashbacks out to make it more...not really suspenseful, but idk what word I'm looking for XD**

**And now onto a few reviews!**

**Scarlett Wolf****: Thanks so much :) I'm glad you love it! I think you hit the nail on the head with Hulk trying to protect Bruce. I don't think I knew I was writing for it to go that way, but I can see it happening, so maybe I'll explore that a little. Who knows? And as for your other questions, you'll just have to wait to find out ****:P**

**Lady ****Miel**** Cacao: Haha I'm glad I made you snicker XD Thanks :D**

**Vampirerex1****: Aww thanks so much! You have no idea how happy that makes me when someone says that :)**

**Alrighty then! Onto the chapter!**

**Disclaimer: I do not own _The Avengers_. This amazingly awesome movie belongs to MARVEL. I only own Constance, Katia, Daniel, Asya, and Justin.**

**Enjoy guys!**

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_Constance curled up into a tight ball under the itchy blanket that had been provided for her, and the stiff cot she was lying on creaked under the shifting weight. She faced the wall, taking in the details of the dull and chipping paint on the brick to distract herself. It had been another near-sleepless night; her body screamed at her with each move she made, and all she kept seeing when she closed her eyes was the sterile white chamber she was becoming so familiar with, the white-clad scientists that occupied it, and the the numerous fists flying towards her face._

_She didn't know how long she had been captive; she had lost track after what seemed like two days, but it could've easily been only a few hours in such a predicament as this. All she knew was that she had been gone long enough for her parents to be worried. She had noticed, through the scarce window that she happened to pass in this godforsaken place, that it was night before she was finally left alone in the small cell she currently found herself in. That must mean that her parents had noticed her failure to return from getting her dog and had probably already contacted the police. _

_She hoped that she would be found soon. She didn't like this place, wherever it was. She wanted to go home, wanted to curl up under her softer, better, more comfortable blanket, and receive nothing more than affectionate touches and loving embraces. Not the punishing and painful blows that she had been forced to endure since waking up in this place. Or the odd experiments they were doing. Anything but the experiments. _

_The first night, she had gotten a good look at what was going on around the holding cell she had been shoved into. There were others like hers, all containing children ranging from the age of about three to closer to her own age. They had all looked so lost, so helpless, and so devoid of hope, like they had given up on any idea of being rescued. And looking around the facility, she had come to realize that trying to escape was almost an impossibility, and that 99.7% of the time, you would end up dead. _

_She had tried to talk to some of the ones close to her age, to see if she could learn anything about her captors and why they were being treated so poorly. But most simply ignored her, like they were afraid they would get punished for engaging in conversation with her. In the end, only a burly broad-shouldered boy and a thin, pointy-faced girl would give her any insight to their situation. _

"_They're a terrorist group," the boy, who had been introduced as Daniel and was housed in the cell across from hers, spoke quietly in a deep, gruff voice. "They kidnap kids like us to experiment on."_

"_They don't like it when you hesitate," the girl, whom Daniel said was named Asya, threw in hotly, despite the tears that were rolling down her cheeks. Constance guessed that she knew this from recent, personal experiences, judging also from the nice bruises she was sporting around her right eye and her cheek. Her nose also looked crooked, as though it had been broken at least twice. "Move too slowly for their liking, and they'll sock you."_

"_But what's going on?" Constance asked from her place near the bars, crounched on her knees so she wasn't as noticeable to the guards; they occasionally patrolled their cell block before going off somewhere obscure to get drunk. She gazed helplessly into Daniel's forest green eyes. "Why are they doing this?"_

"_I overheard them talking once," Asya spoke up with a hiccup. She leaned her head against the bars of the cell catty-cornered from Constance's. "They said something about how none of us are showing signs of enhancement. Whatever that means."_

"_I actually got a look at one of their project files once." Another boy, who had been quiet at first, spoke up and tapped the bars of Constance's cell as best as he could manage. "One of the guards was 'kind enough' to tell me what they were up to."_

"_You're a liar, Justin!" Asya spat, glaring tearful daggers at the skinny boy in the cell next to Constance's. She could see the fire of fury blazing in the blonde-haired girl's eyes. "You know about as much as the rest of us: nothing!"_

"_It's true!" Justin protested fiercely, his voice rising in volume from a mere whisper. "They're trying to duplicate the super soldier serum that made Captain America!"_

"_That's a bunch of bullcrap!" screeched Asya, ignoring the fact that Daniel was trying to quiet the squabbling teens. They were all supposed to be asleep after all. "Captain America was just a regular soldier dressed in a flashy costume to help out the war effort! There was nothing 'super' about him! Maybe if you paid attention in history, you would've known-"_

"_Maybe if you paid attention to-!"_

"_That's enough!" Daniel finally snapped. The two quarreling teens shut up and shrank back at once, and it was then that Constance got the feeling that Daniel was the leader of the little intrepid band._

_There was a long, overly tense pause before Daniel finally spoke again. He sent sharp glares at Justin and at the wall that separated him from Asya. "We're not here to debate the authenticity of Captain America! The priority right now is to bring Constance here up to speed on what's going on. She's already confused enough as it is. She doesn't need your bickering to make it worse. Understand?"_

_Asya grumbled, but Constance saw her reluctantly nod her head in understanding. She could only assume that Justin had done the same, because Daniel had visibly relaxed. Seemingly satisfied, the burly boy turned back to Constance and began to explain what went on around this place._

_The terrorist group that had captured them was an underground assembly, who were trying to build up an army to conquer the country and surrounding areas. Constance got the feeling that Daniel believed Justin's theory, but preferred to take a neutral stand on the subject (she guessed that the topic came up often out of sheer boredom when they weren't being experimented on). Each kid would be taken to a secure room and would be exposed to high levels of Gamma radiation for several hours at a time. After which, they would be dumped into a sort of underground courtyard and pitted against highly trained combat specialists to see if the exposure did anything. If not, the kid would be taken to a medical ward and administered special treatments to prevent any long term radiation damage, and then thrown back into the cell. Then it would start all over again the next day, and the cycle would continue until thy got whatever results they wanted, or if the kid died from radiation poisoning (if the treatments had been forgotten or not administered correctly) or the injuries that had been inflicted upon them. If it actually worked, who knew what would happen. None have ever been successful as of yet. So far, Daniel had said they had lost over 200 kids from what he heard a scientist say. 200 kids and they were still kidnapping more every day to replace the ones that died. _

_This made Constance go silent and slowly shrink back from the bars. Over 200 kids had already been subjected to this fate; over 200 had succumbed to poison or their wounds. And how many more were to follow? How many more would die before any form of rescue came?_

_She had asked Daniel as much, but had only got a biting remark from Asya when the leader and even Justin went silent. "There's no hope for any of us. They're not going to stop until they get what they want, which won't ever happen! We're all going to die, and there's nothing anyone can do about it."_

"_But there must be some way we can be saved!" Constance argued. She was astonished by Asya's quick dismissal of liberation. "There's got to be-"_

"_Don't you get it, you stupid bitch!?" Asya screeched. Constance scrambled back from her cell door, startled and scared of the other girl's sudden lash-out. "No one's coming to help us! No one cares about us! We're never getting out of here! You're a complete freaking idiot to even_ have_ hope of escape!"_

"_Asya!" Daniel and Justin snapped._

_The conversation ended there as Constance shakily bid the trio goodnight, earning soft replies from the two boys and only a "humph!" from Asya. She got up onto her sore, bruised legs and slinked slowly over to her cot, burying herself under the itchy blanket to assume the position she was currently in. _

_As time went on, she found that the nights in this prison always ended the same: bidding goodnight to the other before curling up into a ball, biting her lip so no one could hear the choked sobs wracking her body, shedding tear after tear as she prayed desperately to God for the rescue she was starting to feel was never going to come_

"Connie, wake up." A soothing voice called to her, distant in the black haziness of her mind. Who was that calling to her? It didn't sound like Daniel or Justin and certainly not Asya. How did they know her name? Couldn't they see she was trying to get some sleep before the day's torture?

A gentle hand pushed on her shoulder, jostling her mind and making her inhale a deep breath as her body began to wake up.

'_Noooo, let me sleep!' _she wanted to whine, but decided not to in case it was followed by a broken nose.

"Connie, you're wanted at the helm." The voice said again.

Wait…what?

Constance opened her eyes and lifted her head up to take in her surroundings, and her brain began to catch up with the rest of her. She wasn't in that dreadful prison. She was aboard the Helicarrier, sitting at a table in the D Level R&D lab, and the voice talking to her belonged to none other than Dr. Bruce Banner.

"Bruce?" she murmured, stretching her arms out in front of her, blinking wearily against the harsh fluorescent lights in the lab, silently thanking God that she had not drooled while she was asleep.

The whole prison ordeal from a few minutes ago had been another flashback. She could remember clearly now. She had gone into the lab to grade her students' research paper while keeping Bruce company while he worked on locating the Tesseract. She had gotten through about a third of them before shoving them aside and laying her head down on the table to take a nap. And that's when the dream had started.

She shifted her gaze onto Bruce, who was looking at her strangely. Was that…concern she saw on his face? Why would he be concerned? What had happened while she was asleep?

"What's going on?" she asked him as she moved to stand up, remembering what he had said earlier. "Why am I needed at the helm?"

"They uh-they got a hit on Loki. A 67% match. I was uh, I was watching." He pointed over to a screen in the far corner of the lab, which had displayed on it the tracing software she had seen at the helm when she had first arrived. "They called for you over the PA system."

As if their conversation was being monitored, a voice came over the PA system. _"Constance Grisham, please report to the helm immediately. Director Fury wishes to speak with you."_

The two of them were silent for a few minutes before Constance arched her back, making a satisfied grunt when she heard the telltale cracking noise of the air being released from in between her bones. "Well," she said, straightening herself up again. "I'd better go see what the Director wants."

"I'd have to guess," Bruce began, trying to forget the sight of her arching her back, which made her puff out her chest and display her breasts more thoroughly. He blushed at the memory, but fought to continue speaking in a level voice. "that you're probably going to be assigned to the retrieval team."

"Oh," Constance said. His comment reminded her that Fury had indeed mentioned she would be going to help apprehend Loki once they found him. And it seemed like now was the time.

But what was she to do about Katia? Her baby would need someone to look after her while she was gone. The infant was asleep at the moment, but that wouldn't last forever, and Constance would surely be gone for a few hours. Who would be willing to watch her?

The question was out of her mouth before she could stop herself. "If that's the case, would you mind watching Katia while I'm gone?"

She mentally cringed. _'Stupid, stupid, Constance!'_ she admonished herself. _'Bruce has enough to do as it is! He doesn't have time to watch her!'_

She was surprised, however, by the man's hesitant smile and nod. "Sure, I uh-I can do that."

He had been startled by her sudden outburst, and had concluded that she had requested him without thinking. He also wasn't sure if he should. On one hand, he only knew how to take care of babies medically, not everyday care. On another hand, he didn't want to put her in danger with the Other Guy if he were to suddenly come out.

But some part of him, a part that had been dormant for over a year now, that wanted him to impress the stunning lady standing before him with her lip held adorably in-between her teeth, made him say yes. And now that he did, he didn't want to back out and disappoint her.

"Really?" she asked him, pretty gray eyes wide. He found himself blushing again under her stunned gaze.

"Y-yeah." He managed with an awkwardly crooked smile.

Her own face split into a more dazzling smile, and Bruce could feel his heart rate quicken ever so slightly. Not enough to start panicking, but enough to become just a tiny bit concerned.

"Thanks so much Bruce," she said gratefully. "You have no idea how much that means to me." She began relaying instructions to him as she slipped him the keycard to her room and was backing towards the door, trying to make up for lost time. "She's currently sleeping right now, but I would check on her in about fifteen minutes to a half an hour. She's already eaten and had her diaper changed, so you don't need to worry about that. Basically just sit her in her carrier and pop Finding Nemo in for her to watch. That's her favorite movie. "

"Finding Nemo. Got it." He smiled. He had never seen the movie personally, but he heard it was really good.

She continued on. "If I'm not back by then, read her some of her books. She loves to look at the pictures. Then you can just pop in Beauty and the Beast. She'll fall asleep to that around Mrs. Potts' solo. Hopefully getting Loki won't take long, but I guess that's just wishful thinking."

Bruce laughed, noticing that she was beginning to ramble. Inside he knew she wanted to make sure her daughter wouldn't cause him too much trouble and was finding things to keep her busy. It was all fine though. He "You better get going Connie. Don't want Fury to get pissed at you."

She laughed too, and he was finding that he was really starting to like her laugh. "Right, I should. Thanks again Bruce. I'll be back soon."

And with that, she turned around and dashed out the door.

It didn't take her long to find the helm again, which was surprising when one considered she had not been there since she first stepped foot onto the Helicarrier about a week and a half ago. Since then, she had begun to look for the signs and arrows, and had begun to memorize the directions to all the places she went to during the day.

When she walked in, Fury was standing at his post, his posture as straight as always. Agent Coulson and Steve were standing next to each other not too far away, and Agent Hill was bending over near a computer to get a good look at the screen.

"Director Fury," she cleared her throat, causing the dark-skinned man, the third-in-command, and the soldier to turn around to look at her. She fidgeted slightly, feeling suddenly uncomfortable that almost all the attention had shifted on her, seeing as a few of the agents had paused in their work to stare at her as well. She shook off the discomfort and straightened her posture, drawing herself up to her full height. "You wanted to see me?"

"Miss Grisham." Fury greeted back. "As Dr. Banner might have told you, we got a hit on Loki."

"Wait," a voice sounded from the other side of the room. A balding man with glasses turned his seat around to get their attention, and Coulson rushed over to him. Constance and Steve followed shortly after. "We just got a cross-match. 79%."

"Location?" Coulson asked.

"Stuttgart, Germany." The man replied, clicking onto a few icons on his screen. A picture of an elegantly dressed man with a cane and slicked back, black hair standing in front of what looked like the entrance to a grand party popped up on the screen, data windows popping in all around it. "28 Königstrasse. He's not exactly hiding."

"Captain, Miss Grisham," Fury's voice carried over the room. The two turned to look at each other. Steve's face was dead serious, Constance's was apprehensive, but both nodded and turned to Fury. He nodded at them as well. "You're up."

* * *

**OH YEAH! BIG STUTTGART BATTLE IN THE NEXT CHAPTER, FOLLOWED BY DINAMIC ENTRY OF LOKI, TONY, AND THOR! W00t W00t!**

**So yeah, no appearance from Hulk in this chapter. Don't worry, he'll be coming soon (ha, that's what she said XD)**

**So did anyone notice that I shamelessly put Finding Nemo and Beauty and the Beast in here? Finding Nemo because I'm SUPER PUMPED for Finding Dory! WHOOO!**

**And Beauty and the Beast because that was my school's musical this year. And guess who was cast as Mrs. Potts. That's right. THIS GIRL! :D**

**Be on the lookout for a super awesome oneshot that I'm gonna be posting here in the next few weeks. It's a fill for the Mass Effect kink meme, and it is going to be AWESOME steamy Shakarian sexytimes :D**

**As always, reviews would be wonderfully appreciated, constructed criticism is welcomed (but please be nice!) and I'm not going to tolerate flames :)**

**See you next time guys!**


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